Patronus
by femme4jack
Summary: Coauthored with Merfilly.  Sentinel's weapon turned Ironhide's frame, processors, and memory core to rust, but left behind his spark in its casing.  What makes him who he is?  DotM Fix-it Fic. Continuation of New Moon chs. 2 & 4
1. Activation

**Series Title**: Patronus  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Activation  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack & merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide, Optimus Prime, Ratchet  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG (this chapter, may go up in other chapters)  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: Spoilers for DotM, mentions non-Allspark reproduction method (not mechpreg)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: After constructing a new shell for the spark that was known as Ironhide, Ratchet and Prime are ready to bring him online  
><strong>Notes<strong>: A continuation of Iron Hope & The Velveteen Robot, both found in the series A New Moon by femme4jack. Thanks to Merfilly for joining me (femme4jack) on this endeavor! Merfilly is a wonderful writer who posts her work on An Archive of our Own - look her up at archiveofourown . org / users / Merfilly / pseuds / Merfilly (remove spaces). Ironhide's initial reboot is adapted from Red Alert's sparking in Part 2 of Calming Fire by Femme4jack and Gatekat. It is posted on Gatekat's ff . net profile and works too well not to recycle.

_Systems initialized ... stand-by_

_Core coding initialization ... Completed._

_Running stability check. ... completed. Stabilized._

_Running capacity check. ... completed. Capacity 98.582%_

_Systems check ... Connecting ... Completed._

_Analyzing Systems:  
>Motor Function disabled.<br>Sensor net and navigation disabled.  
>Communications disabled.<br>HUD online.  
>Self repair online.<br>Energon pump and lines at optimal functioning.  
>Hydraulics online.<br>Cooling systems online.  
>Interface systems set to standard early functioning protocols<br>Self-defense systems online and set to standard early functioning protocols._

_Running Systems Check. Running ... Completed._

_Analyzing function files...  
>Affiliation: To be determined<br>Designation: To be determined.  
>Function: To be determined<em>

_Initializing sensor net, navigation, motor function, and communications systems...please wait...Completed._

His first conscious thought was of needing to get up, to be somewhere. There was someone he needed to warn, to defend...

"Easy, mech," a voice said as his optics onlined for the first time and he attempted to sit. "Give yourself a few kliks to settle into your frame before you attempt to move. I need to run some scans. Welcome to functioning."

He automatically scanned the neon-green mech for a spark resonance signature, and his HUD supplied the designation and function, _Ratchet, Chief Medical Officer for the Autobots._ Coding strongly urged his compliance with the CMO's order.

Another mech was present, standing back, well out of the way, watching the proceedings. The HUD scrolled information indicating the potential threat status was relatively high, based on weapon energy traces and shielding capability, but all the military systems seemed to be in low power standby.

After a moment, the HUD supplied him with mech's designation: Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and rightful ruler to all of Cybertron, if there had not been a war in progress. The taller mech remained silent, but his optics were following the new mech's every move.

The new mech's emotional protocols were clearly online, and very active in response to the spark resonance signatures of those in the room. Glyphs scrolled across his HUD to help him identify the range of feelings. 'Familiarity'. 'Comfort'. 'Well-being'. But also a strong sense of duty and a need to defend. It was...confusing. There was nothing in his function protocols instructing such emotions. The emotions were autonomic. He wondered if it was a coded reaction to such high ranking individuals.

"You are unusually silent for a newly functioning mech," the CMO commented, while transmitting a glyph instructing him to open a port for a deeper medical scan, which the new mech complied with immediately. "Your CPU has likely supplied you with my designation, and Optimus Prime's. Do you have one?"

The tone was relaxed, intended to provoke a sense of trust, his emotional protocols informed him. But there was something else underneath, in the mech's energy field, or even deeper, that contradicted it. It again elicited a strong urge to protect...and...to care for the mech...both mechs, who were distressed.

The larger mech, who had been so quiet, moved at last, coming closer but still out of Ratchet's way. He inspected the new mech with optics and deeper sensor scans, causing the new mech's armor to tingle in reaction.

"Your designation is important to us, new mech, that we may welcome you properly." The words came with complete neutrality, yet the undercurrent in the new mech's processor tried to identify the emotive index of 'grief' being present along with 'hope'. Optimus Prime felt both emotions, and yet he was attempting to block both of them from being present in his voice. It was as if he did not wish to influence any part of how the new mech responded.

The new mech regarded both of those who watched him so guardedly with curiosity and growing confusion. He examined a datafile on designations, explaining that many mechs came online with an immediate and strong association with a particular set of glyphs that would be their primary designation for as long as they desired it to be so, and that changes in primary designation were unusual, though not unheard of. Secondary designations were added to indicate ones cohort, to mark significant experiences, and to indicate the formation of bonds.

"I do not seem to have a designation," were the first words to emerge from his vocal processors. "Is there another means by which I may be assigned one?"

Prime inclined his head, trying desperately into not to read hope into that status, that it was not a function of the new genesis his old friend had experienced when his old spark-casing transferred to a blank frame-build. "You could wait, and determine if a designation comes later. Or you can allow one of us to temporarily grant you a designation."

Despite his words, the leader had to look at his medic with a brief burst of complete cluelessness on how to choose a name when this was clearly not Ironhide.

"I would prefer to be granted a temporary designation until one becomes clear, " the new mech stated resolutely, feeling a sense of rightness, both in his emotional protocols and within his chest...his spark, at the decision.

At the urging of the medic, who had now disconnected from his thoracic port, he sat up and scanned around himself with curiosity, though his attention continued to be drawn back to the two mechs even as his HUD supplied him with information regarding the atmosphere, solar radiation, and environmental contaminants that indicated they were on an organic world. It was a world on which they were aliens, yet his datafiles also designated it as 'home'.

"Is it normal for your verbal expressions to be so at odds with your emotional protocols?" he asked with a tone of genuine confusion and all the innocence of one newly created.

The question caught both Prime and Ratchet off their guard as each one had been trying to determine how best to grant this mech a designation that did not goad him toward a path he had not chosen.

Optimus Prime then favored the new mech with a quiet, patient look. "There have been many problems in recent planetary cycles, leading us each to carry heavy burdens. But you need not suffer that, when the addition of a new mech to the world at large is an occasion for joy."

None of his words were lies. They were all true. Yet they omitted so much, that pain choked deep within.

The new mech considered the words, as well as what had not been said, but was still felt, and considered how strongly he seemed to be able to sense what they felt but did not say. He knew, without their saying so, that they were uncomfortable choosing a designation for him. He also knew, clearly, he was not yet ready to pick a primary designation of his own, but the desire to shield them from the discomfort of the former was strong enough to offset the later.

"Assigning me a temporary designation is adding to the burdens you already carry," he conceded, a statement of fact and not judgment. He examined the glyphs associated with the myriad of emotions he felt in response to his first experiences, primarily those desiring to shield, guard and protect. "You may list my temporary designation as this," he transmitted a glyph to the mechs that seemed most in line with what he sensed in his spark.

The emotional reaction, carefully suppressed by both of the other mechs was immediate, and as obvious to the new mech as their spark signatures. Hope, relief, and joy were most apparent. They were pleased with his choice.

"That will be an interesting one to translate into the dominant language of the native sentients of this world," the medic stated wryly. "So many possibilities, though we need to take care that it does not inadvertently assign you to particular function in others' processors."

"Patronus," Optimus Prime suggested, transmitting the human cultural reference, a favorite one of his, along with the modifiers to the initial glyph that fit such a translation.

The glyph settled in among their unspoken communications, and the new mech noted that it felt as if he sat on the edge of a greater sea of ideas that was just out of reach, similar to the way the emotions were so clear and yet not his to parse.

"Ratchet will finish confirming your status, Patronus, and then you will have access to educational materials, to determine your specialization upgrades," Optimus Prime told him when he continued. "You were not designed with a specific function in mind, so please take your time in choosing how to proceed from this point."

"Is a lack of specific function the norm?" Patronus asked, noting that it was the second time that they had brought up the importance of his not yet having an assigned function.

"To be honest, Patronus," Ratchet explained, "it has been so long since we have welcomed a new mech into our midst, that there is nothing normal here. And you are unique, even among sparklings."

Ratchet looked toward Prime, and Patronus felt the buzz of hastily transmitted comms between the two, though he politely did not attempt to tune in.

::He will need to have some guidance, to understand why others are wary, Ratchet. I fully doubt our human allies and their families will fully be able to process that this is a new individual, even as basic as you designed the frame.:: One thing that was beginning to be promising, even with Prime beating back any hopes he dared have, were the colors starting to settle into place.

Colors, however, did not mean the same personality would emerge.

::I agree,:: Ratchet responded. ::Protecting him from undue influence does not mean keeping him in the dark. He is picking up on our emotionally complex responses very early in this. I'll not speculate on what that means. Now yet.::

"Unique?" Patronus asked, politely encouraging them to continue when the buzz of the comm signal had ended.

"Most of the Cybertronians you will meet were sparked by the Allspark," Optimus began, settling his large frame to sit on the berth across from Patronus's. "Whether their frames were full sized and already coded for a function, or were simple sparkling shells, they were brought by the creators to the Allspark Temple. One of my functions was to call new sparks from the Allspark. If you examine your historical data files, you will find that the Allspark was destroyed as part of our war, after having been missing for countless vorns."

"Which," Ratchet continued, "meant reverting to what is considered a more primitive, by some, method of procreation. Budding is one term used, but it is merely a means of causing the creative sparks to expand and create a secondary source, that is then coded, either by the creators involved through a mixing of their own code, or by the delivery of a code packet from an outside source," he told Patronus. "This method means our race will survive, as it could not have without the Allspark."

"You, however, are a cypher to those outside, due to unique circumstances around your creation," Optimus said gravely. "You will remind others of a mech who fell in battle, as you are quite similar to him."

He paused, trying to determine how to phrase that Patronus's spark was from the fallen mech, and yet not outright say he was the fallen friend they had all lost.

"Your spark is not a newly created one, Patronus," Optimus continued, leaning earnestly forward toward the new mech. "The mech that your spark animated was hit by a weapon that destroyed his frame and processors, but left the spark and its casing intact and in stasis. You have the same spark as our fallen comrade, but you are not the same person. Who we are is a complex interaction of our sparks, coding, memories and choices. You are a new creation, despite being a spark who is older than either Ratchet or myself. You deserve the opportunity to decide who you wish to be, apart from whom Ironhide was, as tempting as it may be for all who grieve his death to wish you to be just as he was."

Patronus evaluated those words; the glyphs that came to his own processor related to 'justice', 'fairness', and 'chance' were influencing both of the mechs in this chamber with him. He did not wish to upset either one, and if they said this was how he should be, a blank data chip in some ways, then he would endeavor to live up to their wishes. It felt right, in accordance with his emotive responses, to try and please them.

"I will take the time you wish me to, and evaluate all options." He then looked at each one in slow, steady consideration before looking nowhere but Optimus Prime. "But my place, I know deep within me, is here and nowhere else."

Patronus watched as Optimus Prime's faceplates physically reacted to his words, and found that the relief and joy his declaration elicited in the larger mech were pleasurable to his spark. The flame-patterned mech stood and crossed the distance between the two berths. Patronus, stood as well, looking up at the blue optics of his Prime. As Optimus placed his hands on Patronus's shoulders and leaned down to touch his helm to the new mech's own, the black mech's data files informed him that such a greeting was the ritual welcome and blessing of the Prime to a new creation. Yet, it was also something much more than a ritual. He could feel his spark surging in response to the rightness of the contact.

"Patronus," the flame-patterned mech stated, "I welcome you home. Ratchet and I are both here to support you in any manner possible as you adjust to functioning."

Patronus felt a deep reluctance for the physical contact to end and resisted the urge to follow as Prime pulled away and took a step back, though still close enough for the black mech to feel the comfortable sensation of the other's field.

"Do you have any questions for us?" Ratchet asked, placing a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that once again, felt completely comfortable and right to the black mech.

"None that I have enough reference framing to ask," Patronus told them. "I will once I begin to work, I am certain."

Prime kept his faceplates from forming the smile they wished to; of course there would be questions, for some of Ironhide was definitely still within this mech. He resisted the desire to reach out across the cohort bond he now was certain still existed in some form. He would wait, in hope, that Patronus would reach out to him if he desired to do so.


	2. Coping  or Not

**Title**: Patronus 2: Coping...or not  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Sideswipe, Will Lennox, Robert Epps  
><strong>Rating<strong>: R (M)  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: Spoilers for DotM, graphic depictions of Chicago clean-up, including corpses of children at an elementary school, graphic nightmare which includes violent death of a child, cussing.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: As the humans meet and interact with the new mech, they find him strangely familiar and entirely different from the one who had been lost.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: A continuation of Iron Hope & The Velveteen Robot

Reminder, the book ending in which Megatron sues for peace and is allowed to leave with the remaining Decepticons in order to attempt to rebuild Cybertron is the canon ending for this.

_US Army Reserve Training Center, Midway Airport, Chicago, IL_

William Lennox, fresh from his latest post-apocalyptic promotion from Lieutenant Colonel to full Colonel, collapsed into his desk chair in the designated human portion of the large hanger that was NEST's temporary Chicago-area home. Optimus Prime had insisted on their taking part in the clean-up and rebuilding of the devastated city that had lost, at last estimate, fully three-quarters of the population that had been working or living in the downtown area at the time of the Decepticon invasion.

Lennox was a hands-on kind of commander, taking his cues from Optimus himself when it came to leading from the front. This included getting his hands dirty in the gut-wrenching task removing debris and remains, with far too much of the later. Nothing he had seen - in Iraq or Afghanistan, Mission City or Egypt could have prepared him for what he was seeing daily as they cleaned up Chicago so it could be rebuilt.

That his ladies were temporarily living in an apartment at the Army Reserve Training Center at Midway Airport gave him no small amount of comfort. While Megatron had made good on his promise to gather the remaining Decepticons and leave, there were no guarantees that all had followed him, and Lennox still woke up nearly every night covered in sweat from nightmares of revenge being taken on Sarah and Annabelle, their bodies dissolving into piles of rust-colored dust leaving nothing behind for him to hold on to. Prime had agreed that the safest place for any of their human allies and their family members was as close to them as possible. Reprisals were likely, and family members were easy targets for lone mechs. That Lennox emotionally needed his family close had certainly entered into Prime's decision as well, though it would never be stated aloud.

Lennox was still reeling from his day of clearing the site of an elementary school near the loop, and had at least an hour of paperwork to do before he could call it quits. He leaned back at his desk and closed his eyes for a moment to regroup, only to find his mind filled with the image of the nondescript black mech who had joined his team that day to do the heavy lifting. He was an unusually quiet mech who had introduced himself politely as Patronus. As there had been no new arrivals (though transmissions indicated this would change soon), Will had known immediately that the mech could only be one of three whose sparks had remained functioning in their casings after their frames were destroyed by Sentinel's rust gun. Four, if one counted Sentinel himself, but Will knew that the ethical debate regarding a second chance for that spark could take longer than his own lifetime.

Will had known, without being told, which of the three sparks Patronus was. The coloring that had settled into the frame, a function of the mech's chromonanites, was sign enough. But Will knew on an instinctive level as well. He was well aware that he was supposed to treat this mech as he would a new person, without preconceived notions and expectations. That didn't mean it would be easy, especially with the manner in which the black mech had already taken such interest in Will's well-being.

* * *

><p>After they had collected most of the obvious remains from the playground, including those that were simply empty sets of clothing that would be tested for DNA back on base, they had begun the more grueling dig-out of the collapsed three story building. Patronus had been silently working with them all morning, carefully lifting large chunks of concrete and entire sections of wall and roof out of the way at Ogden Elementary School. During the initial weeks after the failed invasion, the Autobtos had been able to scan sites like this one for survivors, and their efforts had focussed on those locations where there were life signs. But that was three weeks ago. Now, all of the efforts were recovery, not rescue, and each set of ruins seemed more gruesome than the last.<p>

Even his thick mask couldn't hide the stench, and after pulling out the remains of a blond child of similar age and build to Annabelle from the crushed gymnasium whose roof Patronus had removed, Will silently walked around the side of the demolished school, ripped off his mask, and began to retch.

A large shadow covered him as he emptied his stomach of the coffee he had gulped down earlier. Without a word, the black mech knelt beside him and handed him cool, stainless steel container of water he had stored somewhere. Will took it gratefully, rinsing out his mouth and spitting before drinking the rest.

"The data files on our human allies state you are the sire of a child of similar age to many we are unearthing today," the mech said quietly in a voice that was not at all familiar in terms of timbre, and yet, had a quality strangely similar to Ironhide's.

"Yes," Will answered quietly, "her name is Annabelle." _You kept her safe,_ he wanted to say. "Thanks," he added, holding up the water.

"Your blood sugar is low, Colonel Lennox," Patronus said, in a tone gentler than what Will recalled. "Though you are at risk of purging again due to the nature of our work today, you will work at greater efficiency and be more emotionally resilient if you have something other than simply a caffeinated beverage in your system."

Will realized he was gaping, and quickly shut his mouth, shaking his head. "Yeah...umm...thanks," he managed to stammer out, pulling an energy bar out of his pack, ripping it open, and taking a bite.

"Does my presence make you uncomfortable, Colonel? I can request to work with a different team tomorrow," Patronus stated earnestly, now sounding as different from Ironhide as he had previously sounded similar. "I am aware that you were close with the mech whose spark I share."

"No!" Will snapped far too quickly. "No. I'm...confused about how all of this works, despite the explanations. But I'm not uncomfortable with you," _I just don't want to fuck up,_ he added silently to himself, recalling Prime and Ratchet's words about the need to accept the recreated mechs as the new people they were.

"Colonel Lennox," Patronus said far too gently, "your vital signs all indicate that you _are_ uncomfortable. I know it is important to my superiors that I be seen as a new person. Let me assure you, however, that you will not offend or harm me with your confusion regarding my identity. It is to be expected."

Will managed to smile, his confusion worse now than ever, but tempered with a building affection for the mech, who seemed so _young_ and _earnest_. He tried desperately not to think of him as Ironhide might have been long before the war began, before Optimus Prime or Ratchet had even been created.

"Alright, big guy, I'll keep that in mind," he nodded and made his way back to the ruins, before turning his head to look again at the mech whose optics were regarding him keenly. "And Patronus, thanks. I mean it. And not just for the water."

"Of course, Colonel Lennox. You are welcome," the mech replied, standing and making his way back to the next section of heavy lifting.

* * *

><p>Bobby swore he had only stuck around because the city had gone to hell in a handbasket. He was not sticking it out because anyone in the government had asked. He sure as hell wasn't sticking it out to look for a new fight with any rogue 'Cons, or Megatron when he shook off whatever had possessed him.<p>

He was just doing his Citizen's Duty, putting this place as back to rights as he could. Never mind that it meant keeping an eye on his old friends like Prime and 'Bee and Will. That had not had a thing to do with his decision, or so he swore to anyone who listened.

Meeting Patronus, though, actually made him shut those protests up. There was just something odd, almost like the voodoo Figueroa had talked about back in the day, to seeing the quiet mech up and walking around and being helpfully polite. Knowing it was Ironhide twisted something deep inside of Will, Bobby knew, and made him that much more relieved he had gotten away from things before he really found that one sweet ride and friend like Sam and Will both had.

Of course, maybe it had been seeing Patronus with Sideswipe that had actually made Bobby really worry for Will. It just wasn't every day that someone had to try that hard to pretend like he wasn't damned uncomfortable when Sideswipe had actually managed to provoke Patronus to argue over a point of how to do something the best way.

* * *

><p>"The building is structurally unsound," Patronus told his companion, using English out of courtesy to the humans around them, so they would know not to enter.<p>

"Of course it is, that's why we're here," Sideswipe said with all the patience of a three year old human.

"One does not simply walk directly into an unsound building," Patronus pointed out, trying to fathom why Sideswipe would take that course of action as best.

"Look, who's senior here? Me. So back off and trust my judgment for a change!"

"I would if you were making any sense, Sideswipe." Patronus's words were just faintly edged, as if the mech was struggling to keep a temper in check that had not, to date, truly reflected the rough edges they'd once expected of Ironhide.

Bobby had heard the voices rise, and looked, which let him see the flicker in Sideswipe's optics, the slight hitch of both doors, and a very slight sway back of the whole frame. Bobby, like the others, had been cautioned by Prime to give this new mech as much room as possible to develop into himself, and yet that argument was close to a pale echo of the usual go-rounds between Sideswipe and Ironhide. Sideswipe was at least trying to recover from the familiar ground, and did so in a surprising fashion.

He started to explain himself, slowly and patiently, like Sideswipe never really was.

* * *

><p>If Sarah and Annabelle had been back at home, Will would not have taken a day off, much less a weekend. There was simply too much to be done, and the backbreaking work of clearing out the wreckage to make room for a new city did a lot to keep his mind off of stuff he'd rather not remember. He'd suffered his share of post traumatic symptoms over the years. What combat veteran didn't? You either found ways to cope...or you didn't. But the chain of events stretching from Shockwave's appearance at Chernobyl to the longest hour of his entire life in Chicago, not to mention everything that had happened since, had done a number on him. So he threw himself into his work, confident that Sarah and Annabelle were as safe as they could be without being stuck longterm in Ironhide's bunker, and he knew better than to ask that of his wife and their extremely active daughter.<p>

Sarah was keeping Annabelle sheltered from the worst of the devastation. Neither of them were ready for their little girl to face what remained of downtown Chicago, but there were plenty of other tasks for them to be involved in. Sarah was volunteering at the children's program at a long-term shelter that had been set up in a complex of hotels near Midway Airport, and Annabelle spent her days playing and in classes with those same kids. Will knew that the airport and its vicinity, which had become the Chicago Area Recovery and Rebuild (CARR) staging area along with NEST's temporary base, was the safest area for his family to be. Between the energon detectors, NEST soldiers, and the Autobots, nothing was going to get into the primary refugee site. The Autobots were taking the wellbeing of Chicago's survivors very personally.

When Sarah had asked for him to take a weekend of leave, he had hesitated. He knew she wanted to get away from the city, at least for a day, to give Annabelle a place to stretch out and run that wasn't filled with the sounds and scents of a city that had to finish being destroyed before it could be rebuilt. Sarah was a country girl, and city-living, especially in a tiny apartment on an Army Reserve Training Center at Midway, was not good for his wife's mental health. There was nothing more important to him than his ladies, even though slowing down meant dealing with his thoughts and memories. Which was another reason why Sarah was likely pushing for it so hard. She knew all too well that he wasn't 'dealing with it,' whatever 'it' was. So, after two months of almost continuous work, he finally consented to a weekend at a cabin in Starved Rock State Park.

He should not have been surprised that Optimus Prime had insisted on a guardian. His objections that no Autobot could really be spared from the effort were met with the usual patient look of a being for whom a human lifetime was but a flicker of existence, and the bemused statement that the city and tasks at hand would still likely be there when he got back.

It _really_ shouldn't have surprised him that Patronus informed him in his quiet manner that he had volunteered for the duty. The new mech had been on Will's team more often than not, usually with Sideswipe, who, amazingly, had been assigned the duty of being mentor to the new mech. Patronus did not hover, but it was more than obvious that he was watching over Lennox. Will still didn't understand what it meant, and refused to allow himself to be hopeful that it was anything other than the new mech's curiosity about his spark's former ties. Ironhide had been - well, saying he had been a friend was far too simple a term. Brother-in-arms, mentor, protector, kindred-spirit in a massive, powerful form, part of his family - none of the descriptions seemed to cover it. But Patronus? Will didn't even know Patronus, despite working with him on a nearly daily basis. The mech was eerily quiet, and seemed to be avoiding interactions that caused Will obvious confusion. But he was always there.

No, Patronus volunteering didn't surprise him in the least. What did surprise him was the growling, clipped and hissing sounds of a native-language argument between Sideswipe and Patronus at one end of the hanger as Will prepared to collect his ladies for their weekend. To say Patronus was fuming was an understatement. He looked ready to rip his mentor apart, but before the argument escalated, the black mech stalked out, heading toward a pile of twisted steel construction beams and rebar piled in an empty, overgrown parking lot next to the hanger. Will watched from the distance as Patronus picked up a beam and hurled it across the lot, and couldn't help thinking that if the mech had been armed, the pile of scrap would have been slagged.

He glanced to see the silver Corvette standing next to him, watching as Optimus Prime drove up, transformed, and spoke quietly to the black mech. Patronus visibly deflated and bowed his head.

"What was that all about?" Will asked, not sure he really wanted to know, but too morbidly curious not to ask.

"Glitch wasn't processing right," Sideswipe offered in a rough voice, but there was just a hint of feeling sorry for the black mech. He turned an optic down at Will, sensing he wanted the whole story. "Guardian code is intact. He's not trained though. Doesn't have the weapons or practice, and Primus am I looking forward to getting to drill maneuvers into his aft!" Sideswipe growled.

_And if he came along, Sideswipe would have to as well. Prime can spare one, but not two right now,_ Will realized with dawning understanding. "Looking forward to some payback? Drilling, that is?" he asked, unable to keep the half grin off his face at the thought of Sideswipe training his former instructor...or at least the spark who used to be. Ironhide had been a relentless taskmaster, to mech and human alike.

Sideswipe looked over toward the black mech, and his doors twitched just a little in agitation. "Won't be near the same, will it?"

Will looked up at the frontliner for a long moment, then shrugged. "At some point, no matter the species, the next generation gets to step up. It's always different. But different ain't bad."

Sideswipe huffed air through his intakes, not really wanting to answer that. "You'll have a guardian for your trip," he said, getting ready to move off, pushing the matter of Patronus away, so he didn't have to cope with the underlying emotional upheaval. He just didn't want to dwell on someone who meant _something_ to him getting this second chance, when his own brother had paid a larger price, and been condemned to half an existence.

Will gave Sideswipe a questioning look as he transformed and drove away, suddenly more than ready to get away from the emotionally heavy atmosphere and gain a bit of normalcy with his girls. At least as normal as anything could be. He went back into the hanger to grab his bag even as the red Ferrari pulled up beside him, the drivers side door opening in silent invitation.


	3. Mentor

**Title**: Patronus 3 - Mentor  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Sideswipe, Optimus Prime, Jolt, Ratchet  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers, mild violence  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Sideswipe is assigned a new function he never imagined himself having.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: This chapter will bounce around time in a non-sequential manner.

The verb 'to teek' is borrored from the amazing Dwimordene ( All That You Can't Leave Behind ch. 4) and is a made up English word to describe the Cybertronian 5th sense of electro-magnetic fields.

For this story, we are going with DotM novelization canon that Skids and Mudflap sacrificed themselves to prevent Sentinel from killing the other mechs, allowing them time to escape. In our fix-it, their sparks and spark casings, like Ironhide's, were left intact by the rust gun and able to be placed into new mechs. Also, Dino, in our headcanon, is _not_ Mirage, and did survive Chicago (unlike Mirage in the novelization).

* * *

><p><strong>Patronus 3: Mentor<strong>

* * *

><p>Sideswipe mulled over the implications of the his conversation with Patronus, growing more sullen and disjointed as he did so. Why had Prime done this to him? Hadn't he already been through enough serving his Prime, without having to take on the mentoring of a young mech, one who was far more than just a new recruit?<p>

Patronus should have had enough logic to see the flaw in his wishes instead of forcing the confrontation. Even Sideswipe, reckless as he could be, could see that much.

"Sideswipe!" Patronus had growled, storming up to his mentor, angrier than the new mech had appeared since onlining. "Why has _Dino_ been assigned to guard Colonel Lennox and his cohort. Why is my guardian bond being interfered with?"

Sideswipe had flicked his doors in irritation that the mech even had to ask, before answering, "Firstly, you have not been assigned to Lennox, despite your constant surveillance. Second: what are you going to do if danger actually strikes?"

"Put myself between them and danger!" Patronus had growled. "I've accessed the modules on guardianships. I know what these bonds mean, mentor! Do you think they are any less real for having first belonged to Ironhide? Or do you all not truly wish to allow me make my own choices regarding my function?" The young mech was seething with barely contained rage, ready to strike out against any who would threaten his charges, including those who would interfere with his spark-deep duty.

Sideswipe could see the fight boiling in Patronus's optics, but he knew his own armor was slag if they came to blows. Prime had met his limit on in-ranks violence in the aftermath of Chicago, and if there was one thing he did not want, it was Prime raking him over a slagging pit for being in a fight with this mech he was supposed to be training up.

"Patronus, you've got neither weapons nor more than the basic defensive initiatives in your coding! Would you really risk them to a rogue Seeker strafing them from the air?" Sideswipe snarled in attempt to cut the argument off with logic.

Sideswipe teeked Patronus's field, coiled tight with frustration and anger that had been building for weeks. He watched as Patronus's optics suddenly focused on the human on the other side of the hanger, before the mech let loose a string of curses that would have made Ironhide proud as he stalked out of the hanger to let out his anger on a pile of human scrap metal.

Sideswipe had watched him go, and hated the roiling emotions it caused him. Slag it to the Pits and back again, but Sideswipe didn't _want_ to care, and wanted to hate Prime for putting him in a position where he had to.

* * *

><p><em>Two Months Earlier<em>

It was only a day after Patronus had onlined that Optimus Prime had called Sideswipe to his temporary office. The mech examined his recent actions to predict what he was likely to be reprimanded for, and came up blank, but entered the room with a sense of dread nonetheless.

Optimus Prime was ready for him, no work in front of him, which meant Sideswipe was his sole focus at the moment. "Thank you for coming, Sideswipe. I have an assignment for you."

Sideswipe felt a sweet swell of hope that a group of rogue 'cons who had refused to leave with Megatron had been located. Demolition duty with a bunch of squishies was not giving him much of an outlet. "Just tell me where they are, sir, and I'll bring them back to Ratchet as spare parts," he boasted, suddenly feeling better than he had in weeks.

"Sideswipe," Prime said in a tone of slight disappointment. "Not all of the tasks I will have for you involve destruction and mayhem." Prime did favor him with a softly amused, affectionate look though. "No, I need you to be a mentor to another mech."

Sideswipe cycled his optics, and then did so a second time, feeling his processor stutter at the implications of what Prime had said. Sure, he had overseen some of Skids and Mudflap's training, and there had been others he'd trained before them. But to be a mentor? For one of the newly reformatted twins? Training them to fight as a team, to fight as _twins_, had been painful enough. Wasn't it a difficult enough reminder of Sunstreaker's sacrifice knowing that the only other split spark twins in recent history had sacrificed themselves in the line of duty as well? And now Optimus wanted him to mentor one of them, when Sunstreaker had not had the benefit of a second chance at functioning!

"Mentor?" he managed to say in a static-laden voice.

Optimus wondered briefly if he was laying too much on Sideswipe's shoulders, but he was convinced Sideswipe needed to start learning now that a life of violence was at an end, if Prime and his brother managed to actually keep their factions separated and at peace.

"Yes, mentoring. Because you are a warrior, and the mech in question was a military build prior to his reformat," Optimus said gravely.

Sideswipe froze, realization dawning. "I thought the idea was not to limit him to his former function, sir," he said quietly, feeling inwardly like someone had hit his spark casing directly with an electro-whip.

"We do not wish to limit him, or anyone, now that there is a chance of rebuilding our lives, Sideswipe." Optimus cycled air through his intakes, then let it out in a distinctly human-borrowed sigh. "There is too much possibility that his being a warrior, a protector, is so deeply ingrained that no amount of generalizing the code can keep it from developing." Privately, Optimus thought if Patronus was less warlike, then maybe it would tone Sideswipe down too.

Sideswipe's final active memory files of Ironhide came to the forefront of his processors without conscious effort. His admiration could not have been greater for the mech who had retrained him to fight as a member of a cadre, without his twin, after too many vorns of solitary functioning. For so long, he had only been comfortable fighting solo. Their final shared confrontation with the Dreads had been exhilarating, a culmination of countless hours of drilling. And then...right before his optics, the mech who might as well have been his own mentor had been so cruelly 'relieved of duty' by a Prime he had once guarded faithfully...

"I'll do my best, sir," he found himself answering with a silent prayer to a deity he rarely acknowledged that his best would be enough, and would be worthy of the spark being placed in his care.

Optimus inclined his head, voice going softer. "I have faith in you for this, Sideswipe. Go talk to Ratchet about his specifications and protocols."

* * *

><p>Sideswipe met Patronus for the first time later that same day. The new mech was in the small hanger Ratchet had appropriated for the repairs and upgrades he oversaw, the same hanger where the CMO had built the new frames for the sparks who had been known as Ironhide, Skids and Mudflap. The extinguished of the battle for Chicago had been salvaged and were now neatly organized in various piles and containers throughout the hanger. It wasn't their way to let anything go to waste, and Patronus's large black frame, appropriately sized to the mature strength of his spark, was a testament to that.<p>

The black mech was sitting at a terminal, connected by cable to download data modules at the highest possible speed. Whether budded, immature sparklings or adult new creations, new mechs were notoriously hungry to learn, but their processors and kinetic memory needed time and practice to integrate the downloads. Ratchet, after giving Sideswipe a basic overview of Patronus's coding and frame, had told him that new mech had been pushing those limits from practically the moment he onlined, and was going to be needing processor upgrades sooner rather than later. It was, however, time for the mech to start spending time with a mentor, integrating his downloads, and meeting those whom he would be interacting with on a regular basis, both Cybertronian and human.

Sideswipe automatically scanned Patronus's spark signature. It was, as was expected, identical to Ironhide's. He swiftly added a line of code to prevent himself from referring to the new mech as his former teacher and partitioned his files so his data on Patronus did not go into his files on Ironhide. He felt Patronus scan his own signature even as the black mech disconnected from the terminal and turned toward him, standing and transmitting a greeting-glyph. Sideswipe transmitted a greeting of his own, for the first time ever using the glyph of a mentor greeting his charge, forcing himself to stride purposefully and confidently toward the new mech, to brush Patronus's field to sense how differently it teeked. Ironhide's had been a mixture of barely contained violence, irritability, humor, or playfulness depending on what was occuring, all tempered by a fierce gentleness due to his spark-deep guardian function. The gentleness had clearly remained, along with its protective quality. But the ferocity was nowhere to be found. Not yet.

"Your spark...it scans differently from the others," Patronus said in a quiet voice that was nothing like Ironhide's.

Sideswipe nodded; he had expected that reaction. Newcomers did it to him in varying degrees, had done so all his existence. However, if he was to mentor, he needed to explain it so it was not a distraction.

"Spark twin," he rumbled aloud, processor rife with Sunstreaker-laced memories. His twin, his brother, his other self in some ways, was never gone from him because of a long-ago trap they had laid that had cost Sunstreaker his freedom. Much as he would have done the same for his Prime, Sideswipe resented that it had been Sunstreaker who beat him to the punch on who would stay to lure their quarry in. He was certain Sunstreaker had thought he would escape, but when they had returned, Sunstreaker had been beyond repair. In desperation, Sideswipe had spark-merged, hoping to sustain his brother, only to watch the frame dull and gray out...with his brother's consciousness held inside him, their sparks now fused.

He watched as Patronus's optics went slightly vacant. The young mech was likely accessing recently downloaded datafiles on the shared history of the various cohorts that made up their faction.

"Your twin's spark survived the failure of his frame and core, but in a far different manner from my own," the black mech said quietly, hungry to understand, and with the trait he held in common with sparklings of asking about _everything_. "Does he retain any of his memories or a sense of who he was before?"

Sideswipe nodded. "He is...within me, complete, as we shared data-files, but he's trapped, too, because this is my frame, not his." How much did he hate that Sunstreaker only came to the fore on command or severe emotional trauma? All other times, his brother was barely a ghost's whisper inside his spark. "Now that you know enough about my differences, it's time for us to set some idea of how to proceed with your training." There, he thought; that should push them to a new conversation and he hadn't even yelled or punched anything.

Patronus perked up at the mention of training. "I have downloaded as many files as I was capable of processing, but I believe I have reached a point of overload that requires more physical integration than I can manage alone." His complete enthusiasm for training made Sideswipe ignore all the raunchy comebacks for that particular phrasing.

"Why don't you databurst me the modules you tackled, so I can see where we should start?" Sideswipe said instead.

Patronus did so, far more efficiently than a sparkling would have been able. Most of the modules were historical, relating to the war and especially the most recent vorn of events. Cultural and linguistic modules were clearly high priorities as well. The mech was already showing obvious curiosity about Ironhide's place in the historical events that had led to their current situation, as well as as much information as his processors could manage regarding Ironhide's cohort: Optimus Prime and Ratchet in particular. Field repair, organic safety protocols, human first aid, and basic engineering skills had been downloaded that would be useful for the Chicago clean-up. Absent completely was any obvious interest in weapons systems or fighting techniques beyond the basic defensive modules that every newly onlined mech downloaded.

Sideswipe was both impressed and curious how this would all turn out in the end, but being weaponless as long as possible seemed like a very good idea on how to be certain Patronus chose his own path. Maybe, just maybe, Sideswipe was going to pull this off as he had promised.

It was kind of curious, though, to see Patronus having so little interest in weapons. Maybe the new mech was weaker than his predecessor. Sideswipe kept his contempt contained, and pushed at the reason why that reluctance might be there. Perhaps Patronus was spark-weary of war; Ironhide had seen action before the actual war, quelling small protests on Cybertron that had eventually made the world ripe for Megatron's insurrection.

Whatever the reason, Sideswipe would eventually have to insist, but for now, Sideswipe had a promise to Prime to make good on, and that meant indulging the mechling in his development.

* * *

><p><em>Diego Garcia, July 2009<em>

"Sideswipe! Jolt!" Ironhide called from across the hanger in a tone that brooked no argument. "Get your afts over here and follow me." Ironhide didn't even wait to see if the two mechs were coming as he made his way to the sparring grounds on the tropical atoll where they currently were operating.

Once they reached the pounded flat clearing, Ironhide turned to face them, his rarely-used close combat blade extending from one arm. He tended to prefer his fists sheering through armor when up close. "Disarm me! As a team! Go!"

Sideswipe gave the smaller, electric blue mech a scathing look. "I fight solo. I'll take you on myself, old mech."

"That's that problem," Ironhide grumbled, bringing his arms up in a defensive posture. "Gonna get yourself extinguished, or someone else. Now disarm me!"

"Did fine in Beijing," Sideswipe muttered even as he extended his blades and began fluidly circling around the weapons specialist on his wheeled pedes. Jolt, silent as ever, activated his electro-whips and moved in tandem.

"Against a single foe who was fleeing, not fighting," Ironhide growled out in a tone that might have been mocking. "You learn to fight with us as a team, or you don't fight. I won't have you putting the rest of Prime's warriors at risk."

"Prime's the only one I have a duty to," Sideswipe growled back. "He's fine with me!" He rushed in, heedless of where Jolt was, clearly confident that he could take at least that one blade out of commission.

For a warrior designed for distance fighting and disabling large numbers of combatants with heavy rounds, Ironhide was far more agile and swift than one would expect. He ducked and twisted, his own blade grazing the attacking frontliner's thigh even as he lunged toward Jolt for a full-on assault.

Sideswipe snarled at the scratch, as he deemed it, and pushed off on the pad of his other pede, thrusting forward with an intent to disable, only to find Jolt in the way as he tried to avoid Ironhide. Jolt was forced to back-pedal fast, even as Sideswipe pushed anyway, seeing what he thought was an opening at the control box for the lone blade.

Ironhide whipped himself around, the control box now protected by his attack position, and he made two quick moves with the sword, even as he threw his weight back. When he stopped moving, Jolt could not easily reach him, and Sideswipe's leading arm was failing to respond to commands, victim of a precision blow against his pressure sensors.

"Sideswipe, to his left!" Jolt called out as he moved into strike position, his electro-whip snapping in order to send a numbing charge up the left side of Ironhide's frame while simultaneously aiming a low level blast to Ironhide's sword arm. However, the blue mech wasn't fast enough for the deceptively bulky weapons master, who evaded both even as he launched himself through the air at his attacker.

Sideswipe launched himself after, determined to relieve Ironhide of a weapon while his back was turned. But even as he brought his blade up to strike, Ironhide was whirling around, hurling the smaller blue mech directly at him.

Sideswipe had to curse at that maneuver, trying to dodge, and while he was partially successful, Jolt impacted enough to knock him completely off balance. It left him vulnerable to the swift punch Ironhide threw on landing, knocking Sideswipe sideways and very nearly sprawling on the wide clearing.

::We're not going to beat him unless we work in concert!:: Jolt sent to Sideswipe, part plea, part demand.

With Sunstreaker, fighting as a team had been as natural and instinctive as the twin bond itself. They _knew_ what the other would do, and everything in their sparks and coding worked in exquisite harmony with the other. In close combat they were two halves of a whole, unstoppable at close range.

Sideswipe had been crippled by the loss of his other half, even with his brother's shadow-existence within himself. He'd had to learn to fight on his own, and he'd excelled at doing so. His style was wild and dangerous, and as long as he was not having to concern himself with the collateral damage of a teammate, he could rip apart his opponent with aggressive abandon.

Even as Ironhide fired spar-level concussive blasts at them, the silver mech realized his processors and frame simply did not know how to function in tandem with someone who was not his brother.

Sideswipe managed to dive away of the blast, but Jolt was down. In a real fight, he would have been completely disabled or offlined by the close range blast, and his sparring protocols forced the blue mech to remain down. The silver frontlinter tried to ignore the relief in his spark of no longer needing to worry about a teammate, and launched himself at Ironhide in full berserker rage.

Ironhide just gave a deep, satisfied smile, one that boded poorly for the silver mech. With Jolt down, but still on the edge of Ironhide's awareness, the focus would be on taking Sideswipe down swiftly and with as much emphasis on humiliation as the weapons specialist deemed necessary. One way or another, the dangerous mech was going to learn to reintegrate into a unit, or else 'Hide would strip him all the way to basics and start over with his combat training.

Ironhide wondered, with a half whimsical thought, if he could get Ratchet to agree to that, and if they could keep Prime from finding out. Then he just let Sideswipe come in close, expecting to meet his blade. When Sideswipe could not possibly feint or change direction, Ironhide snapped his cannon up, putting its muzzle in Sidewipe's face.

"Yield!" Ironhide barked in command.

Sideswipe glared and growled defiantly, but sheathed his working blade. His systems were hot with rage: at Jolt for being in his way early in the fight when he stood a chance, at Ironhide for humiliating him, but most of all at himself. He was better than this. He had been on his own for too long, and his combat protocols were fragged, more fit for an arena than a battlefield.

"Until I say so, your aft is mine, Sideswipe. Prime's orders," Ironhide said a darkly satisfied tone even as he helped Jolt up. "Now go download the combat specifications for every Autobot on Earth or due to arrive in the next year. I want you to know your teammates strengths and weaknesses better than you know your own blades by the time you report to me at second watch tomorrow. Jolt, you do the same."

"Still don't see the point," Sideswipe growled. "Just turn me loose in a fight and stand back!"

Jolt looked a little peeved at that dismissive tone, but Ironhide simply grunted at the response, shaking his head and saying, "You are too valuable to throw away like that. As much as you might wish to be, you aren't cannon fodder, and you _will_ learn to fight on a unit again."

* * *

><p>Sideswipe onlined from recharge and, as had become automatic for him, scanned for the location of his charge. Patronus was not in the large hanger. He extended his sensors and pinged for his location, receiving an immediate response that the black mech was downloading new modules in Ratchet's smaller hanger. Curious as to what the mechling had chosen to focus on next, the silver mech made his way toward the CMO's domain.<p>

Entering with a brief nod to Ratchet, who was making an adjustment to Dino's pede-wheel, he made his way to Patronus who was connected to a terminal with his optics offline.

::How long has he been here?:: he commed Ratchet.

::Since shortly after your argument yesterday,:: Ratchet replied. ::Best stop him before he slags up his processors. You should know, he has requested weapons upgrades. Ranged and close combat.::

Sideswipe's optics glinted in anticipation of what would come from that. ::I've got this.:: He strode over, laying a hand on Patronus's shoulder plating, light and with enough noise of his motion to not be 'a sneaky stealth ninja' as Sam had accused him of being once.

"Patronus," Sideswipe called firmly.

The black mech did not startle; his guardian protocols demanding he keep his sensors online and extended, watching over Ratchet even as his processors downloaded thousands of data modules. "Sideswipe," he said, quietly and respectfully, standing and transmitting the traditional greeting glyph of a mechling to mentor, along with the modifiers indicating an eagerness to train.

Sideswipe toyed with the idea of practical application of some other portion of coding. After all, mechlings shouldn't have their wishes indulged all the time, and there were plenty of previously downloaded modules Patronus had not yet integrated.

However, Sideswipe wanted this as badly as Patronus now did. "Close combat?" he invited, letting his frame show his eagerness for the fight.

The response was loud rev of the mechling's engine, along with a spat out order from Ratchet to move it outside and to be mindful of the humans.

They made their way to the same overgrown parking lot Patronus had abused in his anger the previous day. The scrap metal and rebar could make the lesson more interesting, for sure.

Sideswipe reminded himself that he was the teacher this time, reinforcing his memory code not to push too hard when they started. This was not Ironhide, and there was no sense in treating him like the weapons specialist at all.

He flicked out fist in a human style challenge, wanting to see which way they would go from here.

Patronus's faceplates lit up with the first honest grin the Sideswipe could recall the serious mechling giving, and then he launched at his mentor with the intent to catch him low on his frame, knocking off his center of gravity with his far larger mass.

Sideswipe danced out of the way of the attack, displaying the grace he'd once been known for, and was learning once more. He had been trained, by the previous bearer of the mechling's spark, to use finesse instead of brutality, and right now he needed every one of those lessons on tap to handle the raw ability of a mechling fresh from combat module downloads...

...Modules that clearly were integrating into the black mech's kinetic memory flawlessly as his larger frame (though not as bulky as Ironhide's due to the lack of heavy armor) moved with quick grace as he pressed another attack, hurling a large construction beam which clipped Sideswipe's shoulder joint with a crash. Peripherally, Sideswipe was aware that others, both mech and human, were approaching to watch.

Sideswipe grunted at the impact and reinforced his protocols to not go at this as hard as he wanted. Unfortunately, the audience gathering was making that difficult, as he felt his twin stir within. Sunstreaker had always enjoyed being the center of attention, whether for his beauty or his skill.

With a pivot on his pede, Sideswipe lunged low, and let his free leg kick out, connecting with a more vulnerable joint of Patronus's knee, trying to knock him off balance.

The black mech stumbled, but recovered with a low rumble that was a familiar, much missed sound. He again pressed his bulk and greater mass to the advantage. Sideswipe blocked the first hit, but the second connected with the sensor array on his helm, and then the mechling grabbed him, attempting to take him down as he was briefly off balance.

That was too much for either twin, as Sunstreaker pushed a counter into Sideswipe's motor relays, twisting in Patronus's grip before he followed through with a yank and kick in one solid motion. Sideswipe let it go through, forgetting to check the strength, but Patronus's armor absorbed most of it.

The mechling staggered back, grunting with pain, perhaps the first true physical pain he had experienced. Recovering, he launched himself again, barreling into Sideswipe with all the subtlety of a freight train, raining blows with systemic precision upon the sensitive motor relay cabling on the silver mech's arm as they fell toward the ground. The fragger had clearly downloaded his specs and found one of his weaknesses.

It went through Sideswipe's processor that possibly Patronus had remembered, but he struck that thought aside, snarling and fighting back with a few dirty tricks of his own. His helm smashed hard into Patronus's mouth as they rebounded on the ground, jarring them both.

The mechling roared in pain, and a distant part of Sideswipe's processors knew that Ratchet's wrath was now a guarantee, but the mechling's aggressive blows would bear no holding back. As they rolled on the ground, he put his own knowledge of Patronus's frame to good use and managed to grab a neural line under the mechling's right arm even as Patronus pulled it up for another punch, twisting the line hard and disabling the entire limb.

"You need to block as well as hit!" Sideswipe growled, pressing his advantage as he rolled on top, finally unsheathing a blade in a swift motion to press against the larger mech's chest. "Yield," he commanded.

The deep, guttural growl of defiance was so much a part of Sideswipe battling Ironhide, yet this time, it was not Sides letting it escape. The onlookers were somewhat uneasy, until all tension seeped away from Patronus's frame, and the mechling gave a wide grin. Sideswipe did not crow in exultation at his win, but he did nod briefly in satisfaction as he stood and Patronus likewise got to his feet.

"You did well, for your initial integration of those modules, but you are unbalanced toward aggression and it leaves you open. I want you to download these defensive ones as soon as Ratchet gives your processors clearance for more," Sideswipe instructed, sending the module numbers to his charge in a quick databurst. Ignoring the curious onlookers other than a quick nod at Prime, he made his way with Patronus back toward Ratchet's hanger for repairs and the mechling's first lesson in the medic's post-sparring temper. No modules could prepare a mech for what only experience could teach when it came to the gentle attentions of a fragged off CMO.


	4. Upgrades

**Title**: Patronus 4 – Upgrades  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Dino, Ratchet, Optimus Prime, Will Lennox, Sarah Lennox, Annabelle Lennox  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Patronus is determined to gain the upgrades and skills he needs to resume the function that calls to his spark.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Annabelle's plush Ironhide toy looks like this lovely one (pics . livejournal . com / mmouse15 / pic / 0004453q / g7) created by plushbot27 and loved and snuggled regularly by mmouse15 (isn't she lucky?).

_From Femme: It has come up that there are strong similarities between Merfilly and my take on Ironhide's guardian protocols (being a spark-deep function that creates bonds with his charges) and April Raven's A Universal Concept (www . fanfiction . net / s / 5169543 / 1 / A_Universal_Concept), a wonderful story that everyone should read - it is one of the best stories out there that deals with Ironhide as guardian :)_

_I want to make it clear that the similarity of ideas is synergistic, not the deliberate lifting of an idea out of someone else's story. The idea of functions (guardian functions as well as others) being spark-deep, as well as the formation of bonds between mechs and their charges, has been a solid part of my head canon and a staple of my writing and co-writing through the massive amounts of text that make up the Dathana de Gray AU collaboration, as well as my G1 AU Darkfic "For the Beauty of the Earth" and its follow-up, "Guardian" which are about Hound's environmental guardianship and spark-deep protocols that go wrong._

_I was not aware that April Raven originated the idea of guardianship as a spark-deep trait, or guardian bonds. It was never my intention to use an idea of another author without permission. I've conversed with April, and she has no issue with our use of the concepts. April is most definitely one of the authors who has inspired me the most regarding Ironhide's character, and is an all around genuine and giving spirit. I have eagerly awaited her updates, reviewed, and rec-ed her story on many occasions. Failing to give credit to her in this story was not malicious. It was simply that the ideas are firmly a part of my own head canon, have been so for a long time through many stories I've written, and I believed them to be fanon ideas developed by many authors. Please read April Raven's wonderful story, and do not be under any misconception that ideas about guardianship or guardian bonds belong to Merfilly or myself._

* * *

><p>Patronus 4 - Upgrades<p>

* * *

><p>Ferrari 458 Italias normally did not have a back seat, at least that is what Annabelle's mommy had told her. But special ones that were actually giant people could when they wanted to, so Annabelle's strawberry pink camo patterned booster seat fit just fine in the back seat of the speedy red car named Dino.<p>

She liked him, mostly. He talked funny (though he didn't talk to her much), he could skate, and she wondered if he could figure skate on ice like the people in the Olympics. In her imagination she pretended that he was her partner as she was thrown into the air wearing a flowing, sparkly red costume that matched his paint. Daddy had said he'd be better at hockey. Which was okay. Annabelle liked hockey, too, and played on the mini-mite hockey team at ice rink back home.

But right now she didn't want to think about skating or the fancy red car who was taking them to a cabin where she would play all weekend. She had her arms crossed and was staring out the window at the road that was still broken in a bunch of places (not that it stopped Dino).

She sighed, really loud, so everyone would hear how mad she was. Dino was nice, but he wasn't the big black truck that she had seen from a distance. The one Mommy and Daddy said Ironhide's sparkler was now in. She wanted to meet him so much, and Daddy had said he was coming with them on the trip. She didn't understand why she and Mommy hadn't talked with him yet, and no one could give her a good answer except that Optimus had wanted Ironhide to have some time to get used to his new body first. She and Mommy also didn't have permission from Daddy's mean boss to talk with the robots unless one was supposed to protect them. Annabelle thought that was stupid and said so, because Optimus and the President were Daddy's bosses, not the mean lady who thought she was Optimus's boss.

"Annabelle," Will said, after the second dramatic sigh. "This is not how we try to act when we want to go have fun, is it?"

"It's just not fair," she said with all of the excessive drama a six-year-old was capable of. "Why couldn't Iron...Patronus come? You promised," she huffed, recrossing her arms and lightly kicking the seat in front of her. Not too hard, but hard enough to let Dino know that she was _not happy_.

Dino sent a light rumble through the seat, trying to soothe her. He did not mind the youngling, but in some ways it was rather unnerving, as well as depressing, to deal with the young of such a fragile species.

"I didn't know know he wasn't field-ready, angel," Will told his daughter. "Maybe next time, he will be ready."

"But he's been alive again for soooooo long and I never get to talk to him!" she whined. "It's gonna be a hundred-thousand-thousand years before I get to talk to him. You get to see him every day and I never ever ever do, and I miss him!"

Annabelle's lip had started to quiver and a full on tantrum seemed just around the corner. They were rare for her, but when they came, they were something that quelled even the most seasoned soldier.

"Annabelle," Dino's voice resounded softly in the interior. "From all I have seen of Patronus and his actions toward your father, he misses you as well," the Autobot said. "Can you be big and brave, though, and let him have just a little more time to be ready to take care of you?"

Will found himself hoping the Autobot's words made an impact.

They all listened as the little girl took a big, shuddering breath, and Dino noted that the youngling's vitals had slowed a bit at his words.

"How can he miss me if he doesn't even know me anymore?" she asked quietly, furiously wiping away her tears and trying to be a big girl like Dino asked, hugging her well-worn plushie tight.

"Honey, he might not have Ironhide's memories," Will began, trying to find the right words. "But his...spark still knows us. He just has to have time to get to know us again," he promised her.

"Two months seems like a very long time to us, boo," Sarah added, "but for Patronus, it is hardly any time, and he has been spending most of it learning everything he needs to know to be an Autobot. It won't be long now."

Annabelle barely nodded, hugged her toy, and leaned her forehead against the window as they streaked by Chicago's western suburbs.

Sarah could only hope that Will and Dino were right, and that meeting Patronus would not be like losing Ironhide all over again for the little girl. If he were indifferent towards her...no, she did not even want to think about that. Patronus had certainly been anything but indifferent toward Will, as confusing as it was for her spouse. She reached over and squeezed his thigh in affection and empathy. This wasn't an easy conversation for him.

* * *

><p><em>Two months earlier<em>

Sarah had spent the evening at the refugee hotel complex where she had started a Girl Scout Daisy troupe for girls her daughter's age. The six-year-old had fallen asleep in the car on the short drive back, so Sarah carried her into the rather run down two-bedroom apartment Will had been assigned at the temporary NEST base at Midway. Will was sitting on the couch, an empty beer bottle in one hand, Annabelle's homemade Ironhide plushie in the other, absently tapping it on his leg as he stared at a blank TV screen. As she pushed the door closed with her foot, Sarah watched him shake himself out of his stupor. He gave her a weak smile, stood up and put down the empty bottle, taking Annabelle to put her to bed.

Sarah grabbed two more beers from the fridge and waited for Will on the couch, listening over the clatter of the window air conditioning unit as he went through the normal routine of saying prayers with their daughter even though she was already asleep. The blond woman smiled softly and noticed that he even included several "Primus and God bless" wishes for all of the Autobots, as had become the ritual ever since Annabelle had learned the name of the Cybertronian deity. She listened when he got to what was normally the end, but instead of "Primus and God bless Ironhide," the name Will said was "Patronus".

She briefly closed her eyes. Will didn't talk shop much, but it was a bit hard to avoid with them living right by the temporary NEST base. She suddenly knew all too well why her husband had looked like someone who had seen a ghost. He'd been expecting the new mech with Ironhide's spark to make an appearance ever since he'd been informed of his reformat, but that didn't mean it was easy.

When Will came back, he sat next to his wife, grabbing his beer and taking a long drink.

"Hard day?" she asked him, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Yeah...hard...strange," he said somewhat flatly.

"Wanna talk about?" she asked, taking a swig of beer and relaxing into him.

Will shifted so his back was on the armrest, pulling Sarah to lean her back against his chest, both of their feet up on the ratty couch that reminded them of the one in their first apartment.

"Met him today. We were working at a school...doing recovery. It wasn't pretty. I lost my breakfast after I pulled out a girl Belle's age. He followed me, gave me some water. It was...it is so confusing, babe. Totally different voice, but I feel like I can _hear_ him. It's not his body, yet I can _feel_ him there, and it's all probably just my wishful thinking. Guess he requested to work with my team. I could feel him watching me, like he was trying to figure it out, whatever _it_ is. Maybe he just doesn't understand why the hell Ironhide was connected with us in the first place. Or maybe he knows about it through the files Ratchet gave him, and just is curious."

"Or maybe his spark remembers, and that guardian bond thing Dino was telling us about is still there," she quietly suggested.

"If I hope for that...and it's not true? And there is really nothing there of Hide…"

"It's his soul, Will. Of course there is something there of Hide, the truest part of him. You aren't imagining things when you say you feel him."

Will shook his head, then leaned down so his forehead rested on the top of her head, drinking in the comforting smell of her hair. "I just don't know," he murmured. "It makes me think, what really makes us who we are? We say nature and nurture, but Hide lost both. Lost his body, programming, all of his memories. If you came back with totally new genetics and no memories, would there really be anything left of you?"

"You're over thinking this, Will. That's not like you. You live in the present, take things as they come more than anyone I know." Sarah rubbed her hands along his legs soothingly.

"I just don't want to mess up," Will fretted. "I feel like he wants something from me, but what if I just start treating him like Hide? Pretending that's who he is. That's exactly the crap Ratchet and Optimus lectured everyone on and on about."

"Maybe he _wants_ you to help him remember," Sarah suggested.

"Wishful thinking," Will said, quietly.

"Or hopeful. Nothing wrong with hope, babe."

Will wanted to hope, but he was a solider, veteran of some of the roughest action in the modern wars, and that made hoping for the better a difficult task indeed.

* * *

><p>Patronus reviewed the data once more, as he had done repeatedly since initially coming online. The historical data of the reign of Sentinel Prime and his Lord High Protector showed him why Cybertron had been ripe for the war that came with Megatron's revolt. The culture had stagnated to a point that the individuals were lost in a sea of class expectations, indoctrinated from the moment a new spark was framed.<p>

As Ironhide, he had performed tasks that had been, at the time, lawfully ordered peace-keeping exercises. In retrospect, he doubted the motivations and needs of Sentinel Prime in ordering them. He found himself questioning whether the war could have been averted by actually listening to those who engaged in the sporadic protests. When the leadership had changed, and the choice had come for Ironhide, Patronus hoped that it had been less about maintaining the old ways, and more about the fact Megatron had simply been wrong.

Coming online in the aftermath of a battle that had destroyed so many lives, regardless of whether they had been human, Autobot, or Decepticon, had left Patronus reluctant to embrace the ways of war. He had concentrated on skills that he felt would be useful to the rebuilding effort, and learned new ones that had not been a part of Ironhide's repertoire. He had downloaded and considered such things as philosophy and diplomacy. It was his hope, perhaps influenced by the utter weariness in his ghostly cohort bonds, that such skills would be of far more use to his Prime now.

Then he found the pull of his spark to the human family of Will Lennox. There was only one way to honor that pull, now that it had been bluntly put to his attention that he would not be allowed to take care of them as he ought without full warrior capabilities.

The review of the events still left him torn by regrets and fears for the future of both his own and the human species. However, he had no choice, not when he weighed his spark's wishes.

Patronus rose from the monitors, and steadfastly walked to Ratchet's work area. If the medic was busy, he would wait there. He would wait however long it took for Ratchet to give him back the tools he needed to watch over his charges.

He did not have to wait long. As soon as he entered Ratchet's area, he had the CMO's full attention.

"Ready for more downloads? Let me just take a look at how last set is integrating," Ratchet extended a cable, signaling toward an empty examination berth.

Patronus got up on the berth and laid back, settling. "Actually, Ratchet, I want to go further than just downloads," he said in a quiet voice, one that indicated resolution, if not enthusiasm.

Ratchet gave Patronus an intent look, and then smiled and asked, "Have you come to a preliminary decision regarding your function, then? Or are you wanting your interfacing upgrades?" It was typical for a mechling at Patronus's stage of development to ask for a means to more closely connect with his cohort. He plugged into Patronus's thoracic port, and the mechling brought down his firewalls without being asked, well accustomed to the routine of Ratchet's calmly professional perusal of his processors.

Behind his own firewalls, Ratchet was impressed with the efficient manner in which the mechling was integrating the sheer volume of data into his kinetic memory and emotive subroutines. A distinct personality was developing that felt at once familiar and refreshingly young. Patronus shared Ironhide's protective and fiercely tender nature, but the underlying aggressive violence of the military-built Ironhide seemed to have been replaced by a desire to understand, to prevent conflict before it escalated. Patronus's integration of the diplomacy modules would have made Ironhide snort and cycle his optics in disdain, but to Ratchet, it was a sign of hope that a young mech would respond in such a way to the destruction he had onlined into.

"Interface protocols are intriguing, but I do not have the resources to upgrade two major energy consumption systems at the present time, Ratchet. I seek my weaponry and my armor, so that I may resume my correct functions." Patronus kept his voice level and polite, but the force of his desire to be rejoined to the Lennox family was stronger than any other drive Ratchet had sensed in the mechling.

Ratchet's spark gave a bittersweet pulse. On the one hand, it was yet another sign of just how much of Ironhide continued to live on in Patronus. On the other...a mech dedicated to peacekeeping and diplomacy, with the power of Ironhide's spark…the notion had filled Ratchet's own spark with a sense of hope for their kind he had no longer thought he was capable of feeling. It had almost been like seeing Patronus as Ironhide's own sparkling, having so much of his creator within him, yet opting for a different path.

"There have been many kinds of guardians among our kind, Patronus," Ratchet said cautiously. "Are you certain you wish to have weaponry integrated with your frame? Sideswipe's view of the matter is mono-optical due to his own function coding and experiences."

"I was given to understand that I will not be allowed solitary access to my charges without weaponry and armor. This makes logical sense, given the probability of unknown Cybertronians who refuse to accept Megatron's peace, or the potential betrayal by Megatron when he has recouped his strength enough to resist any terms that Prime tries to impose upon that peace." Patronus was set on his path, now that he had chosen it.

"Whether integrated weaponry is required will ultimately be Prime's decision," Ratchet explained neutrally, "but you are correct about the logic. Is this truly what you wish? Your integration of the historical, philosophical and diplomatic modules has been above par."

Patronus let a grimace crease his faceplates, and then he shook his helm. "My duty is to Prime, but my bonds are to the Lennox family unit. I must be capable of fulfilling both sets of operating parameters. Therefore, this is what needs to be done."

Ratchet nodded, satisfied that Patronus was not being unduly influenced by his warrior-mentor. "Shall we go through the possible modifications, or have you already chosen your upgrades?" he asked, unable to resist simultaneously comming Optimus with the news.

Optimus Prime reviewed the data burst sent with the comm ping, and sat back from the data pads he had been reviewing. Part of him wanted to go make certain this was Patronus's idea, yet Ratchet had established that to his own satisfaction. He really had no reason to go to medical, and yet... ::Ratchet, would you require assistance?:: he asked.

Ratchet carefully schooled his features to suppress his humor at Prime's carefully worded request. ::I see no reason why this would be an inappropriate time for you to discuss with him the guardian function he has chosen, Optimus. Just because Sideswipe is his mentor does not mean that we all will not take on aspects of that function as well.::

Optimus Prime considered that invitation carefully, then pushed up to head down to Ratchet's repair bay. ::En route, Ratchet.:: Through long-standing habit, Prime did not point out Ratchet was right; after all, that was a common enough occurrence.

Patronus, meanwhile, had projected the visual design of the weapons he had decided on, while feeding the specifications to Ratchet via a databurst.

"These will take me a few days to fabricate and test to be certain they integrate properly with your frame and power levels. Would you care to work on their fabrication with me?" Ratchet asked in as non-committal tone as he could muster. There was no reason Patronus needed to build the basic, yet elegant ranged and hand-to-hand systems he had requested, but the medic's curiosity about the mechling's skills were getting the better of him.

Patronus thought about that. "It would be useful, so I can more effectively repair the systems in case of malfunction," he reasoned. "But my assistance is still needed with the clean-up procedures. Would it be possible to only work on these systems when the humans have no need of me?"

"Of course," Ratchet replied quickly. "Everything is secondary to that mission, including your own upgrades, though having your armed will enable you to be the solo mech with a human team, so I see no reason not to make at least a basic weapons and armor upgrade a priority. By the way, Optimus is coming, in case you have questions for him regarding your chosen function."

Patronus did not need the warning. His spark could _feel_ the closing proximity to his Prime. Still uncertain what to do with the nebulous bonds that he had no memory of forming, but were, nonetheless, integral parts of his spark, he tentatively reached out across the connection, welcoming with curiosity the coming conversation. He had spent far less time with Optimus since onlining than he would have desired.

Optimus paused as the connection solidified past the ghostly presence it had been. He had lived so much of his existence with the shadows of his bonded links, thanks in most part to the betrayal of one of the very earliest he had ever formed, that to have one returned to healthy, full existence was almost painful. Even if it was now flavored with new experience, and with shades of uncertainty common in an early bonding, it was known to his spark, and had to be answered. Carefully, knowing he had to be certain not to unduly influence his youngest charge, no matter the age of that spark within his chestplates, Optimus returned the connection.

Once he had accepted the reach of the mechling, Optimus pushed himself to resume his walk, and entered moments after. "Greetings Patronus; Ratchet."

"Optimus," "Prime," Ratchet and Patronus simultaneously responded, the latter holding himself perceptibly straighter, with a more formal posture even as he made room for Optimus to view the holographic rendering of the weapons upgrades the black mech's previous incarnation had designed for frontline mechs of Patronus's frame-size.

"Good choices," Optimus said in response. "Unsurprising, given how well you have been studying all of the information at your disposal, Patronus." He nodded as Ratchet moved back a little, giving Optimus the center court, in human terms. "You are certain of the choices you have made, as well, Ratchet tells me. What questions has the data terminal been unable to answer?"

Patronus swelled with pride at the words as well we the obvious approval he felt through the cohort bond. "I have attempted to do as you both wished me to and have thoroughly investigated my options. While I believe our future may be best served by engineers and diplomats, I cannot deny that guardianship is the function which my spark answers to. Will having these upgrades and combat training allow me to resume my function with the Lennox family and within this cohort?" he asked, only noticing that he had used the word resume rather than commence when he felt the emotive reaction echo through his newly open connection with his Prime before it was quickly suppressed.

Ratchet had noted the words too, but was less surprised than Optimus Prime, given all his observations of Patronus to date. His unobtrusive wall of support toward Optimus within the cohort was immediate, and welcomed.

"They will meet the necessary logistical requirements, yes," Optimus Prime told the mechling. "However, there is the psychological aspect of being in such a protective role, Patronus. It is one thing to feel the need to protect those less capable than ourselves, and another to have the ability to do as needed against the various threats, with the appropriate measure of violence." That he kept his vocalizer even and firm was testimony to vorns of having inured himself against the shock of how Megatron's guardian protocols had been so subverted.

"How will you go about ascertaining my psychological competence for the function, and what must I do to develop the needed personality profile?" Patronus asked resolutely, his field awash with determination to prove himself and please his superiors. "Is the concern that I would be too violent, or not violent enough for appropriate measures?" he added with just a hint of humor.

Prime considered those words quite carefully, taking his time to answer. On the one hand, the answer depended on knowing that mechlings were all prone to a hysterical reaction either during or after their first combat. On the other, this was Ironhide's spark at work within that new frame, guided by a new processor and set of experiences.

"I believe, Patronus, your will is strong enough to meet either challenge you face," he finally did answer, a quiet swell of trust in the mechling washing out to reassure his youngest cohort member.

"I will endeavor not to disappoint you," Patronus replied softly, a static-tinged tone revealing just how much the feeling of being trusted meant to him. "I do not wish my inexperience to put my charges at risk, as anxious as I am to resume this function and reestablish my bond with them. I trust your judgment, regardless of how much my spark demands that I return to my charges."

Patronus unconsciously leaned into Optimus's field as well as the connection that remained open between their sparks, hungering for the trust and pleased approval so apparent there, as well as for something deeper that his integrated protocols did not yet have the language for.

Prime shifted, and one hand came up, gripping a shoulder that was not quite where he expected it to be, before squeezing in reassurance. His fields rippled with the same emotions, a mix of relief that he wanted to hide, and firm support for the mech in front of him. "You will not fail me, Patronus, so long as you live up to who you wish to be. All else is training and experience."

Ratchet, wisely, kept his mouth firmly shut, and did not intrude on the quiet affirmation happening between their young charge and his Prime.

* * *

><p>A lone, tall black form was waiting in the parking lot by the Lennox's temporary apartment as Dino drove up late Sunday evening. Will brushed his dozing wife's shoulder and gestured toward the still figure whose blue optics shone brightly in the night. Annabelle, who normally would have slept through being transferred from her booster seat to bed inexplicably awoke as Dino came to a stop some thirty feet from the waiting mech.<p>

Before her parents could say a word to stop her, she had unbuckled and clambered over Will through Dino's passenger door which the mech had already opened. Even as her parents scrambled out (Will grabbing their bags and his daugther's booster seat so Dino could transform without obstacle), Annabelle was exuberantly yelling "Ironhide!" at the top of her lungs, sprinting toward the black mech, who knelt down to be closer to her level.

When Will moved as though to intervene, Dino silently gestured at both parents to remain. Will noticed out of the corner of his eye that several mechs had gathered at the entrances of the hangers that served as their temporary base several hundred yards away, including Optimus, Ratchet, and Sideswipe.

"I'm sorry I called you the wrong name, Patronus," Annabelle's voice carried through the night air clearly.

"You may call me by whichever designation you are comfortable with, youngling," Patronus responded kindly. "Patronus is my temporary designation until I choose to make it permanent or choose another."

"Patronus is nice. Kind of like a secret code name, and Mrs. Epps told me about the wizard spell. I like wizards and Mommy started reading Harry Potter to me at the cabin last night. Do you like my toy? Will you pick me up?" she responded in a flood of words, holding up the plushie version of his former frame.

Will and Sarah held their breath as Patronus reached out his hand, cupping it carefully around their daughter when she had scrambled on. He stood slowly in a fluid motion, holding her and the plushie closer to his optics.

"The resemblance to my former frame is quite uncanny," he pronounced after a brief inspection. "Your mother put great care into making it." He moved her to chest level and began walking toward the waiting human couple and mech.

"Your voice is different, and you look a little different. Less old and denty," Annabelle continued thoughtfully, reaching out to touch the smooth obsidian chestplates. "But I can tell it's still your sparkler. You feel the same."

"I am glad I meet your approval, Annabelle. I am certain we will be good friends, and I will be seeing more of you and your cohort once I receive a few more upgrades to keep you safe," Patronus replied as he knelt in front of her parents and opened his hand at ground level.

She didn't climb off immediately, but instead circled her arms around his thumb, hugging him as tight as she could, the pressure barely registering to his sensors, but felt keenly nonetheless. "Of course we'll be good friends, silly. We already are. And I understand. You need some cannons. You look sort of dorky without them." She hugged him again and then scrambled off his hand, skipping toward Will who scooped her up.

"Thank you, Patronus," Sarah said, blinking back tears.

"Thank you, Sarah Lennox, for your patience as I obtain the upgrades and skills needed to resume my guardianship function. And thank you, Dino, for taking my place with them for their trip and keeping them safe."

"Of course," Dino said, reaching up to grasp the taller mech's shoulder. "It was no bother. I enjoyed driving on open roads again."

The two mechs turned to walk toward the main hanger, leaving two rather stunned human parents and one completely nonplussed child in their wake.

::All of this effort to treat him as a brand new person,:: Ratchet commed Optimus as they watched Patronus and Dino approach, ::and a human youngling shows us in less than a klik just how little it matters to him.::


	5. Beyond the Basics

**Title**: Patronus 5 – Beyond the Basics  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Dino, Ratchet, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Skids, Mudflap, Jolt, Bobby Epps, Sergeant Latta  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers, mild violence. Makes vague reference to intimacy of an unspecified variety between genderless Cybertronians who use the pronoun "he" for human convenience.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Patronus struggles with his limitations and considers a choice which could cost himself, his cohort, and his charges either way.

**Notes:** _Merfilly has written the backstory of how Sideswipe ended up as a solo twin in Twin Fates. Be sure to check it out at (archiveofourown . org / works / 223838).  
><em>

_We decided that Jolt was on a mission on (maybe briefly off planet?) in DotM. Why? Because we want him around and he is awesome, and the prequel comics are more...suggestions, don't you think?_

_Thanks, again, to Dwimordene for the verb "to teek" to describe the sense of EM fields_

_All the Cybertronian martial arts methods mentioned in this chapter are from the relevant articles on the TF Wiki. What would we fanfic writers do without it?_

* * *

><p>Patronus 5: Beyond the Basics<p>

* * *

><p>Robert Epps occasionally made a point of observing the Autobots 'practice' their form of fighting. It helped him analyze the methods and make reasonable predictions on how best to utilize their own tactics against the Decepticons, maximizing the efficiency of the human weapons in the long run.<p>

Plus it was damn cool.

Today was no different, since severe weather and tornado alerts had decided to screw with their ability to continue Chicago's recovery efforts. He was sitting up on one of the catwalks, watching as Jolt tentatively started training the pair of newest Autobots. He'd never really gotten that close to the pair of terror twins, as they were definitely influenced by some of the worst mass-media Earth could offer the first time around. Now, however, he watched as they tried to absorb what Jolt was teaching them in rudimentary defense. That topic had been designated as a priority, because of their inherent differences when compared to Patronus.

Ratchet, on inspecting the sparks of the lost twins had been of the opinion that they truthfully were not as strong or as mature in development as the war had forced them to become. Rather than giving them their full-size forms back, he had made the decision, with Prime's blessing, to revert them to a smaller, more juvenile form. The medic had wryly commented that perhaps, this time, they could provide a safer environment for the pair to mature, so that the hasty personalities of necessity did not materialize in the pair.

_"Isn't that artificially influencing them away from who they were?" Will had asked, mindful of all the care being taken with not influencing Patronus._

"No, though I can see the concerns. It is more... trying to give them time to become who they might have been, while also trying to erase the trauma surrounding their original lives," Ratchet had said.

Watching them, and observing Patronus who was resting to one side from his own session with Sideswipe earlier, Bobby wasn't so sure at that line of reasoning, but this crop of second chances was something he was still wrestling with.

"Skids, " he heard Jolt call to the mech who apparently had once been Mudflap. The twins had, according to the rumor mill, actually ended up with the opposite designations after a giggling sibling argument over which name belonged to which bot nearly shortly after onlining. Epps still hadn't heard why they kept the same designations (albeit reversed) while Patronus had a new one.

Bobby watched with interest as the small mech eagerly attended to his mentor's instructions on the proper blocking technique using a Cybertronian martial arts technique translated as Diffusion. Apparently, like Aikido, it was a highly effective way for a smaller bot to turn the force of an attack back on a larger, more aggressive opponent, as opposed to Metallikato, the more aggressive fusion of techniques Sideswipe was a master of.

Skids, just as eagerly, returned to working with the large practice drone, formatted from a fallen Decepticon's frame. This time the small mech successful redirected the force of the drone's (rather mild and slow) attack back against it. The hulking form stumbled, giving Mudflap an opening for a quick strike against a fracture point in the drone's knee joint, a technique from yet another martial art known as Crystalocution. Epps had to be honest that he couldn't get enough of the stuff, and finally moved along the walkway, climbing down to a platform that put him at speaking level with the sitting Patronus so he could ask about the techniques. He still found himself strangely reluctant to speak with the mech who had once been Ironhide, but thinking about him as a brand new arrival rather than a reincarnation helped keep him from getting the shivers.

Patronus gave the former Air Force Combat Controller a polite nod.

"Find yourself favoring a particular style yet, big guy?" Epps asked as the twins celebrated disabling the drone that had been on the easiest setting.

Patronus gave a grunt of consideration. "I see the value of Diffusion in turning an attacker's aggression back toward his or her own frame. It fits the ideals Prime wishes for us to function within. But I am finding myself drawn to Metallikato fusion due to its combination of the processor and spark discipline found in Circuit Su, the effective attacks of Crystalocution, and Tekkaido defensive methods. I plan to master as many disciplines as I am able."

Epps nodded, unable to resist recalling a similar conversation he'd once had with Ironhide, who had instead responded with a chuckle, _"it doesn't matter how well your spark is disciplined if I just blasted it out of your chestplates."_

As if sensing his thoughts, Patronus continued. "I have enjoyed target practice, though. There is a certain satisfaction which I feel would come from knowing that a threat to my charges has been completely eliminated, though disabling an enemy for potential rehabilitation or return to Megatron is the proper choice now."

That was also something Bobby was having a hell of a time wrapping him mind around, so he changed the subject.

"Think those two ki... mechlings," Bobby began, changing his word for 'kids', "have the juice to tackle more than one style as a whole? Or do you see them settling into just one variety?"

"Younglings would be the appropriate term for their current frames and the age and size of their sparks," Patronus corrected easily. "And I am uncertain. They are very young, and much will be determined by their own desires and what sort of frames and processors their sparks can support once they have fully matured. Remaining in an appropriate frame size, and avoiding too many spark-taxing upgrades as their sparks mature will apparently allow them better processing power than their previous functioning. Their reformat is likely to be a great benefit to them in the long run."

Bobby looked at the pair, who were, despite the serious need for the training, actually making a game of it and enjoying themselves without being quite as fractious as they previously had been. "I can see that. That's good."

He then made himself look at Patronus, and really forced his mind to wrap around the _before_, with the _now_ sitting there beside him. "So... how's the whole experience treating you, big guy? You seem pretty chill most of the time, but from my point of view, there has to have been some disconnect"

Patronus turned his head and regarded the huma for a moment, his optics focusing and cycling in a manner Epps had come to associate with thoughtfulness. "The experience of onlining as a new mech with a fully mature spark, of integrating knowledge and skills and discovering my function is the only thing I know. It has been a largely satisfying experience." Patronus continued to look at Bobby with an intensity that made him want to squirm, and then seemed to make a decision, leaning a bit toward him.

"But I also feel that I am missing part of myself, likely a function of having bonds I have no memory of forming," he continued. "I must decide whether to, at some point, download Ironhide's last memory-core back up. Once I do so, my processors will be fully occupied with integrating that information for a protracted period, and I will not be able to integrate any other upgrades or downloads simultaneously. In essence, it could prevent me from performing my function, and could take several years, depending on how much of his core I choose to integrate and how easily the data becomes my own," Patronus said in a tone that was both open and uncertain in a way Ironhide had never been.

"Man, that's harsh..." Bobby told him after a long, respectful moment. "Stay who you are now, with these ghosts in the back of your brain, or...give up being around us short-living humans to become something between now and then?"

Patronus shifted uncomfortably. "In essence, though it will all depend upon the ease with which I integrate the memories, and how doing so affects the stability of my personality matrix. Ratchet has no records of complete reformats, such as myself, integrating their former memories. In cases where such a full reformat was needed, where nothing of the former processors, frame, or code was reused, there was good reason for the new mech not to integrate those memories or replicate their previous core coding."

Patronus shifted again, then turned his full frame to stare at Bobby in a disconcerting way. "Everyone is being cautious about influencing my decision regarding this, but humans are, thankfully, less so. What would you do, in my position, Robert?" he asked.

Bobby thought long and hard, taking his time. Whatever he said might just get him thrown right on out if it made Prime pissy. He's heard stories about Prime's temper over human interference. However, maybe there was a way to be diplomatic.

"Dude, is there any way to skim the files, pick and choose, without actually, absorbing them all? Or even just...read it like a book. A data pad. See who he was from his own thoughts, and make the choice to either keep that distance between you and him, but know what led him to do what he did? And if you decide you like what you see of who he was, maybe it will feel right to be not just who you're becoming now, but also accept who he was as part of the new you?"

Patronus gave a hum of consideration. "I must admit I do not know enough about the process, other than it being long and attention-consuming. I will need to ask Ratchet more about it. I had not even considered that a copy of Ironhide's core remained until I witnessed Dino doing a backup prior to leaving on a mission." Bobby was certain he heard something all too similar to Ironhide's irritation at that fact, and suddenly wished he had been a fly on the wall when Patronus first brought the subject up with the CMO.

* * *

><p><em>One Week Previous<em> 

Patronus had to wonder about the wisdom of emotive subroutines that amplified that already chaotic feelings that stormed through his spark. Until he had felt his guardian bond was being subverted, he had never experienced such pure rage that could easily lend itself to tearing apart another mech. Irritation and frustration, yes, but not rage. And now he felt it again, as if something at the center of his spark had been ripped from him and he would stop at nothing to get it back.

The potential for violence, inherent in his guardian protocols, gave him pause, and he forced himself to attempt one of the spark-calming exercises he had integrated from the first Circuit Su module. After spending a breem visualizing various glyphs and focusing on their deeper meanings, he felt his new weapons systems power down, though his rage had not left him. He knew he could now approach Ratchet without doing physical harm. At least he hoped that was the case.

"Patronus," Ratchet said, beginning a friendly wave before lowering his hand as he realized that the mechling was brimming with anger, enough that it was spilling over into the latent cohort bond they still shared. It was all too familiar. "Something's on your processor, I take it."

"You keep backups of Autobot memory cores!" the mechling snarled, stalking straight up to Ratchet so they stood optic-to-optic, his field flaring in collision with the medic's own.

_That_ was so achingly familiar, and yet it wasn't, not with the changes in Patronus's frame and shielding compared to Ironhide. Still, it pushed Ratchet off-balance on the mental level, and he grabbed at an equal measure of irritation to combat being flustered by the mechling.

"Of course we do! Memory core injuries are common in high-impact, high-voltage situations like, oh, war!" Ratchet said with more sarcasm than he possibly should have used. "And?" He could make an educated guess where this was going, but the mechling had torqued his mood.

"Why did you not format me with those memories?" Patronus growled, his spark pulsing with fury. "So much I could use for my function, but instead I start off as nothing better than a sparkling! Useless to those I am supposed to protect."

Patronus's spark pulsed again, painfully, as ghostly bonds seeming to mock him from within for his lack of skills and knowledge.

"Because, you slag-processed mech, it's not as simple as just onlining with the memories. Memory core integration takes long enough that by the time you were fit and able to be useful for anything else, Annabelle would have been in university!" Ratchet snapped off, though that was not the complete reason, and he wondered if Patronus would press for the fuller explanation.

_The span it took a human youngling to grow into an adult,_ Patronus thought. _Barely a spark-pulse by Cybertronian standards...but for a human..._

Patronus backed off at that thought, all the fight going out of him as he sat on a berth, slumped over. It shouldn't matter to him. Integrating Ironhide's memories, in the long run, would benefit everyone, even if it took a vorn or longer. One human family unit should be of no account in light of the greater good of Prime having his highest ranking lieutenant fully functioning with the vast sum of Ironhide's experience at his disposal.

He was of practically no benefit to Optimus as he was now. Instead, he cost Prime the valuable time of another warrior, who was forced to be his mentor rather than finding and subduing those who could very well be planning to harm his charges, his cohort, or some random defenseless human.

Yet his spark writhed with real pain at the idea of spending years effectively in stasis while his charges, whom he had only so recently regained, aged at their alarming rate. It was his duty to shield them. His spark demanded it. Just as it demanded that he stand by his Prime and be the first in line to defend his cohort.

The most logical means for him to fulfill his duty to Prime was to end this sparkling-like farce of developing his personality matrix and learning his function. He should demand to integrate Ironhide's memories, no matter the cost in time. It was a small price to pay. Yet his bonds, all that was left to him of Ironhide's unique identity, insisted that he remain fully functioning, and protect the humans who had claim on his spark.

In order for Patronus to do as he believed Ironhide would wish him to, he could not, at this time, integrate the memories. Some part of him was relieved by this. But something far stronger in his spark _wanted_ those memories even more than he had even wanted the upgrades that were allowing him to begin fulfilling his function.

He looked up helplessly at Ratchet.

"Patronus?" Ratchet's voice had gentled from the crusty tone of someone ready to push it just short of physical violence. "It was also Prime's own personal choice, in the long run. Bumblebee and I were given a chance to voice our opinions. But of us all, Optimus Prime owed Ironhide the most loyalty and gratitude, for service through the long war, and before that even. His feelings on the matter were strong, that you be given a chance to be as you are now, to choose later, if you desired, to integrate the memories. If you wish to know why he felt that way... you'll have to ask him. It was never done with malice in mind."

He reached out, his hand coming to rest on Patronus's arm as he took the steps forward to be closer. "Who you were, who you are, and who you will be? All three matter strongly to us."

Patronus vented. Despite the bonds he was keenly aware of, he felt isolated and alone within his spark. When he spoke, the tone was quiet and flat. "Forgive my outburst, Ratchet. I am conflicted." _Dangerously so_, he added to himself silently as he considered the still-underlying chaos in his spark. He suddenly wanted nothing more than a brutal hand-to-hand training session with Sideswipe, to focus his conflict on gaining the skills to fulfill his purpose to Prime, cohort, and charges. To forget, for a time, about a pit-spawned choice he wished he had never been given.

The internal conflict and frustration teeked so clearly that Ratchet's spark ache all over again. When they had lost Ironhide, there had been so much of himself that wanted to fall into the abyss of stasis, at the very least, but he was needed. And then... they had been given a rare chance to save the sparks of their lost ones.

Patronus was still too immature along the path of self-development to haul him off as Ratchet might have done with Ironhide, just to distract him, reassure him. But tactile comfort was another thing, and Ratchet was not immune to the mechling's plight. He sat beside the younger mech, slipping his arm around the still broad shoulders. "I'm used to outbursts from all of you slagging afts," Ratchet told him in a calm voice. "Sometimes, I even understand why you do it."

Feeling the mechling's systems calm and his field come back into equilibrium was one of the more rewarding sensations the CMO had experienced recently, especially as the frame Ratchet had built, with so much care and bittersweet hope, relaxed into his. He made a note to himself to speak with Sideswipe and remind him that even if Patronus did not yet have his interfacing upgrades, he still was in need of tactile forms of connection beyond what took place in close combat training.

"I'm always here, so's Prime, so's Bee, you need to discuss anything, Patronus," Ratchet told him, reinforcing it with a firm push along their cohort bond. "And don't you go thinking any one of us is too busy for you!" he added as testily as he was known for being. "Not much point to living, if you don't take the time to be there with the ones you call family."

Ironhide would have made some acerbic response about the pit-spawned cohort he had been saddled with, and then faced the medic senseless. But the mechling shook, physically leaning in so his helm was on Ratchet's lap, while reaching back along the bond in a mixture of gratitude and upheaval, suddenly every bit a sparkling in a mech's frame.

Ratchet accepted the physical closeness, sending out a dire threat along the comm band that no one at all better need medical services any time soon. He then started stroking along the plates and lines of transformation in a carefully calming form of massage he had learned in long-lost days before the war. Patronus needed the comfort, and to be perfectly honest with himself, Ratchet knew he had needed a chance to be there for the mechling.

* * *

><p>The average day in Chicago had settled into a routine. The soldiers would map out a field of debris, the engineers would discuss their insights with the Autobots, and then the Autobots would confirm the plan on how to shift the rubble. They were adept at getting access to the interior spaces for the team of recovery specialists, who had the difficult task of removing the bodies or acquiring DNA samples from those remains that were too much a part of the debris for removal.<p>

After four months of that routine, downtown Chicago was nearly clear of debris. Other parts of the city that had been damaged were still in need of attention, but the commercial core of the Windy City was ready to be rebuilt, and the Wreckers had plans which the human engineering and city-planning teams were salivating over. Once the rebuild was complete, the buildings of downtown Chicago would, themselves, produce enough solar and wind based energy to power the region, not to mention all of the integrated green space in the buildings themselves that could feed a city.

Many humans were skeptical, Patronus had learned. Apparently, despite all the planning and proof on paper, humans believed that anything approaching self-sufficiency was a pipe dream called utopia. Of course, it had taken one of them, and elderly engineer, to explain the concept of 'pipe dream' to Patronus. Apparently it was related to the processor images produced during a high-grade binge, but more intense and longer lasting.

This day was one in the build up toward transitioning the Autobot efforts to the rebuilding instead of removal, as the smaller debris areas were well within the abilities of the firms and Corp of Engineers that were handling clean-up. Patronus and Jolt were the only two assigned to the humans working this particular building, a clinic of some kind for the underprivileged The humans were working steadily, Patronus supporting the weight of a collapsed piece of roofing, when the mechling heard a sudden click and whine near where Jolt had just stepped.

Some instinct of the spark, deeper than training had Patronus call out "Jolt, look out!" but it was already too late. The device exploded almost directly underneath Jolt, sending shrapnel flying in every direction. Patronus could not let go of the roof without it collapsing on the humans working underneath. Jolt tried to shield the closest group of humans with his own frame as high temperature shrapnel shredded his outer armor. It was obviously not a low tech device from the damage it was causing, and the fact neither human nor 'Bot had detected it before it was tripped.

Jolt tried not to howl in pain, but as his HUD spiked with multiple system fails, critical damage reports, and too many notifications of hydraulic pressure loss, he could not help making some noise. The humans he had mostly protected swiftly moved out of the mech's way so he could stagger to his knees and then prone, slowing all his fluids as much as he dared to minimize loss.

"Every one get out, so Patronus can move!" the sergeant in charge of the humans said, looking out and doing head count. He had to wonder just when it had become ingrained in them all, even the civilian contractors and volunteers, to immediately help their fellow wounded, because cuts, burns, and abrasions were visible on some at the edge of Jolt's protection, but they were mobile at least. Perhaps, he thought cynically, there had been some good after all in the Decepticons' attack, if it gave their own race a reason to finally band together, think of each other, and not let the petty differences get in their way.

"Out! Out of the way!" Patronus likewise yelled as he simultaneously commed Ratchet and ran a scan for more devices now that the materials involved were registering. The humans scrambled out from under the half-standing structure. As soon as it scanned clear, he lowered the roof and rushed to Jolt, activating his basic first aid protocols and sealing off the lines that were leaking too heavily to seal themselves.

Far more calmly than his spark felt, he reported all the damage to Ratchet who was already racing in their direction from another part of the city, trusting the humans present to take care of their own who were not so critically wounded.

"You'll be fine. Ratchet is en route," he said softly to Jolt in their own language as he sealed off another energon leak. Jolt's optics were locked on him, nearly white with pain.

"Twins... Pat, gotta look after them..." Jolt was worried, almost frantic with both pain and the fact he had a special duty. That duty had been given to him by Prime, and he did not want to fail at all. "Don't let me let them down."

"You won't," Patronus assured him, comming Ratchet again for an ETA as his sensors picked up a dangerous fluctuation in Jolt's spark, along with critical failures in his cooling systems. He silently cursed and began following Ratchet's commed instructions. Jolt was a mentor to the twins who, unlike himself, were little more than sparklings and would be under his care for several vorns. He worked for a time in silence, concentrating hard at following Ratchet's instructions exactingly, but the rerouting he was capable of, and the failture of Jolt's venting system made him suddenly look up. How could one slagging weapon do this much damage?

"Sergeant Latta, we need to spray him down," Patronus ordered firmly. "Have your team bring the hose from that pump truck, but keep the pressure low. His armor is slagged and those internal systems are easily damaged without its protection."

"Yes sir," the sergeant told him, going to get that all set up. He didn't want either of the two 'Bots hurt; both had worked so hard to try and make Chicago clean enough for the survivors to move back to, and had been pretty easy to get along with.

"Stasis?" Jolt asked, knowing that it would buy more time, but could be risky if there was damage to his core and it could not maintain his systems. Ratchet, when queried, said 'no', afraid that the shrapnel could have damaged the sustainment modules that trickled energon to the rest of the system during stasis.

Knowing that Jolt's systems could very well trigger stasis on their own, Patronus focused on keeping the smaller mech aware, cursing inwardly that he did not yet have the upgrades and coding for a direct interface that would allow him shut down some of the mech's pain receptors and neural relays.

"Focus on remaining online for the twins. Tell me what you have planned for their next session," he instructed as the fire company began spraying the silt-contaminated water, pumped directly from the river because the city's water system had been compromised. It would add even more of a mess to Jolt's internals, but would, at least, keep his systems from going critical. Ratchet's ETA was eight minutes. Far too long for Patronus's comfort.

Jolt chuckled, painfully, but with real mirth. "You'll laugh at me, but we were going out to see some of this world's less developed areas. Since they'll mature here, I thought maybe they ought to see its natural environment." He didn't want to admit that he wanted to explore more of it, as the Decepticon menace had proven to be non-existent of late. That would all change now, and it would be back to duty rotations, and vigilance.

Sergeant Latta noted the discoloration of the water sweeping away from the injured mech with worry. He could see that Patronus had been clamping off the lines that were spraying fluids, and looked around at his men. A couple who were not giving first aid or injured were sent to use their zip ties, c-clamps, and anything else they could to help tie off the 'bleeders' in between the careful sprays of water. They couldn't maintain a constant spray anyway, not with the the way the pumps were set up, so they could at least try and help in between coolings.

"Avoid any contact with the energon," Patronus instructed, worried about the sheer number of capillary lines that were not sealing off on their own. Something was wrong with Jolt's self repair. Patronus did not have the proper tools to access them and cap them off, and he could only focus on the larger lines. "Focus on the green lines. Those are his coolant, which is not a toxic substance to you, but keep away from his legs and feet. Too much energon bleeding from his capillary lines for you to safely work around."

"I understand the fascination with Earth's natural beauty," the mechling went on, as though they were not in a critical situation, some wellspring of calm in his spark keeping at bay the unavoidable freak-out at the first real injury he'd witnessed. He moved to adjust the position of Jolt's right leg, the one that had stepped on the device, so the energon would seep away from the humans, and pried off lose pieces of shredded armor to search for larger lines he could cap "This is, for now, our home. I look forward to exploring it with the Lennox family unit and experiencing it from their perspective."

The humans obeyed the words of advice, while Jolt focused on not flinching every time someone brushed against, or in Patronus case, pried off, something that hurt too much. He paid attention to Patronus's words instead, listening and thinking about it. "You are lucky to have such a good bond with a human family, Patronus. It will make settling to this world easier, as you are more connected."

Patronus gave a hum of agreement, his spark giving a pulse of relief as his audio sensors dectected a familiar siren making its way toward them. "In my spark, this world and its sentients are part of us. I have no memories of Cybertron. They may see us as alien, but your charges and I are, in our own way, natives. It would not be a bad thing to find a willing human family unit for your charges to connect with."

"Maybe Robert Epps will finally let us see that family Lennox says he keeps hidden in Florida," Jolt said, weakly. His optics dimmed some, and his core was so hot. It would be so easy to just slip into a little recharge...

"Jolt, you bring your processor back up this moment!" Ratchet demanded as he came through the hole in the building, having screeched into a tumbling transformation just outside on the tail end of Jolt's words. "Thank you both, humans, but I do not want to injure you in my haste to repair my comrade," he added, to dismiss the two that were clamping the smaller tubes.

Patronus moved to assist the two humans climbing off of Jolt's frame, adding his own quiet thanks before stationing himself close enough to assist if Ratchet called on him, but not be in the way. The panic that he quelled while he was the only one on hand to assist was beginning to take hold of his spark again. What if Jolt had extinguished under his care? What would have become of the youngling twins? There were so very few Autobots on Earth, spread so thin. Now some new threat had arisen, and he did not have the skills he needed to defend his cohort and comrades and keep his charges safe.

::Patronus!:: an incoming comm from Bumblebee interrupted his thoughts. ::Twins are incoming. I tried to run interference but can't keep them away. They are going to beat me to you.::

::Got it, Bumblebee. They do not need to see him until Ratchet has finished. We will also need a flatbed to transport him once he is stable, so I will ask Sergeant Latta to arrange one.:: That was the least Patronus could do, considering he had failed to protect Jolt from harm in the first place. Intellectually, Patronus knew Jolt was senior to him, and yet a piece of his spark still felt responsible in every way.

Patronus was reluctant to move away from Ratchet and Jolt, should the medic need assistance, but felt an impatient nudge from Ratchet through the cohort bond to focus on the running interference with the twins. "Sergeant Latta?" he called once out of the building's debris.

The sergeant turned, frowning in concern. "Jolt gonna make it?"

"With Ratchet's care, likely." Patronus could not let himself think otherwise. "He will need transport."

"Step ahead of you. Called for an ambulance for the people... no, no one's hurt bad, but it's the easiest way to get the ones who are hurt into a medic's care... and then hollered for one of the big rigs to come pick your mech up."

"Thank you, Sergeant. We are fortunate to have you as an ally," Patronus said even as his longer-range scanners picked up the signatures of the approaching twins. Their motorcycle alt modes should not have been able to out-pace Bumblebee, but it was clear they somehow evaded the talented scout who had been training them in stealth operations that morning, or as Annabelle had called it, hide 'n seek. He extrapolated that Bumblebee had sent them into the city to attempt to elude him, and they had simply been closer to the scene of the explosion. They had likely commed Jolt and had been unable to contact their mentor, or perhaps they had picked up the less encrypted human transmissions.

A wave of concern suddenly hit Patronus. He had scanned the immediate area carefully for any traces of other devices, and he knew that some of the NEST team were radiating out from the explosion site and doing the same with their Cybertronian-tech. But what if Skids and Mudflap ran into another device on their way? He should have thought of it earlier! Once again, he was failing in his duties.

He opened a comm line to the twins, tied in to Bumblebee's frequency, even as he transformed and roared down the street in their direction, his scanners on full for any hint of the chemical explosive agents he had earlier detected. ::Skids! Mudflap!:: he transmitted in a commanding tone that suddenly came naturally to him. ::Remain in your position. There could be other devices, and your current upgrades are not equipped to scan for them. I will come to you.::

::But Jolt...::

::...needs us!::

The disconcerting habit of one twin beginning a sentence and the other finishing it was something that the entire team had been getting used to. Patronus noted that under stress, it seemed to be even more prevalent, as there and barely been a klik between the syllables of one and the beginning of the other.

::And you would not want Jolt to have to worry over you two being in medical as well!:: Bumblebee chastised the pair, producing an instant stop in each motorcycle. The pair then transformed, optics scanning around as if they could detect an IED all on their own, just as Patronus arrived at their position, transforming and kneeling down to be closer to their level.

"Your mentor will be alright. He is exactly where he needs to be, under Ratchet's care. When he is stable and Ratchet gives the go ahead, we will take you to him," he assured them, placing one hand on each of their shoulders and gripping them.

The twins practically collapsed into him, both talking at once in the same confusing pattern.

"What happened?" "What are his injuries?" "Why would this happen?" "We'll get whoever did this to him!" "Was it those slagging Decepticon creeps who didn't leave with Megatron? He's not going to be in stasis, is he?" each question poured from the twins as though they were one bot, and they hardly gave him a chance to answer. Taking a page from Ratchet's manual, he began stroking each one, while his Circuit Su modules kicked in so his own field would teek calm to reassure them.

"We do not know who is responsible, but we will find out and prevent them from harming you, your mentor, or anyone else. I promise," he was saying, one broad arm around each youngling as the yellow Camaro drove up. Forgetting his relative rank, Patronus commed Ratchet to see if he should order Bumblebee his way to assist.

::I'm already en route with Jolt to medical. Dino is on his way to your position to escort the younglings back to base, and you and Bumblebee are to assist the NEST team in scanning for more devices,:: Ratchet ordered tersely.

::Yes, Ratchet.:: Patronus remained with the twins, still soothing with fields and touch. "Dino's going to come escort you two back to base," he said warmly. "Jolt's going there, with Ratchet. I'm sure once Ratchet is done you two will be allowed in there, but if you want Jolt to be really, really well? You need to wait outside medical until then."

Bumblebee was still caught off guard from time to time by just how patient Patronus could be. His words to the twins produced some whining and protesting, but a firm repetition of how much Jolt needed them to not bother Ratchet settled it all down. Maybe it was a skill Patronus was acquiring from Sarah Lennox, or just from learning to care for Annabelle. Or maybe it was how a Guardian would be in a time that was not tempered by the threat of constant violence, Bumblebee mused.

Dino's arrival prompted the twins to shift into motorcycles, staying close to the other Autobot and actually being fairly well-behaved. That let Patronus look over at the spec ops officer and wait for further clarification of orders.

::We start in the immediate area, shields fully up, all armor sealed, and then circle outward. The NEST team is bringing in EOD members to investigate the actual device and debris it caused, as well as to help search the rest of the city.:: Bumblebee frowned a little. ::I'm not picking up any Decepticon energy trails at all. So either that had been sitting there since the battle, or...::

::Or it wasn't our own kind,:: Patronus finished for him, a chill going through his spark at that very idea.


	6. Glasnost

**Title**: Patronus 6 – Glasnost  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Optimus Prime, Bobby Epps, Mikaela Banes, Will Lennox  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Patronus gets some of his questions answered, but Mikaela Banes arrives on scene, leading to other mysteries.

**Notes**: For those of you younglings who weren't around in the Gorbachev era, Glasnost is Russian for "openness".

Skyhammer, who is mentioned in passing in this chapter, is a character who can be found on font of all knowledge, the tf wiki (tfwiki . net / wiki / Skyhammer_(DOTM)

Merfilly has written a one-shot related to Patronus about Bobby Epps, A Needed Conversation (archiveofourown . org / works / 238102)

If you _want_ to pretend Mikaela from Patronus is the same one that appears in Merfilly's series, Walk a Different Road (archiveofourown . org / series / 8602) or from Femme's story Ozone, we will not discourage you. For ourselves, we enjoy pretending that she is the Mikeala from Zuzeca's brilliant story A Place Without Expectation (zuzeca . livejournal . com / 17936 . html) and that Mikki now has her own sweet ride in the form of a kick ass Scorponok who transforms into a motorcycle (though Scorponok, sadly, is likely beyond the scope of this tale). Of course, you are also free to imagine none of the above. Whoever Mikki is in this chapter, she is AU from any of the other stories mentioned above, and this story will remain platonic in terms of interspecies relations. Can't promise the same about authorial imaginations, but anything we write that is not gen will be posted separately as an AU.

* * *

><p>Glasnost<p>

* * *

><p>Optimus Prime was not foolish enough to believe all of humankind had embraced the presence of the Autobots on Earth, but as ever more evidence made it clear that the IED, and another like it found in a separate debris site, had been the work of humans, he grew quite concerned.<p>

"Lennox," he began. "They took the risk of killing other humans, just to injure one of my mechs," he said. "Collateral damage is something I have come to expect from Decepticons, having watched them tear through their own to reach an Autobot. I know that some human groups practice methods of destruction that inflict loss on innocents to get to those they truly wish to hurt. But I had not expected it in order to strike my kind."

Bobby spoke up from where he was cleaning the high-powered pulse pistols he had been given by the tech team. "Prime, it don't matter. If they even thought about any of us being in the way, they wrote us off as 'Bot Lovers."

"Too true," Will said. "We're traitors to humanity, in their eyes. There were even whispers of that after Egypt, and not all of it from fringe groups. There are politicians who use this kind of rage, deliberately get people riled up and then feign innocence."

Optimus Prime did not like those answers. "I admit that while I have noted many similarities in our species, I am saddened to know how deeply we share the more vile traits."

"Can't be helped, free will, conscience or no conscience, and different ways of looking at what's right or wrong," Bobby said, not even looking away from his weapon. "Not even having a single big bad enemy will ever be enough to make us get along."

"Your species if far too young for you to be this cynical about its fate, Robert," Optimus said in a gentle rebuke, glancing at Patronus, who was doing maintenance on his own latest weapons upgrade across the hanger that had been secured as their command center. The mechling, who had performed so admirably in the aftermath of the attack, was unobtrusively monitoring the conversation. "What we must do now is secure proper intelligence about the threat and then decide, along with Earth's leaders, how to respond. While I am certain Mearing is putting full effort into the investigation, I believe we will do a little investigating on our own."

"What we really need, right now, is someone to get into the local population, someone to mingle, blend in, and get us a pulse of the civilian side of things," Will said out loud, thinking along the same lines as Optimus. "They'll spot any of my soldiers, no matter what."

"Don't look at me; I'm the one who retired and still somehow wound up saving the damn day," Bobby told his former superior officer and best friend, voice sliding and teasing around the old joke of who actually did the most work in their unit.

Optimus started to speak, but his sensors were alerted to another presence entering the bay.

"I think, what you mean, is you need me."

Mikaela Banes looked even more tan than ever, her dark hair setting it off crisply. She was in a pair of raggedly distressed jeans and a shirt that tied off just under her ribs.

"Mikaela," Optimus said in a tone that was instantly warmer and conveyed his relief, "I am pleased you are back."

Optimus would debrief the youngest and smallest member of the SpecOps cadre later regarding her extended special mission. Thanks in part to Mearing's dictatorial handling of who could and could not work with the Autobots, she had been working for them overseas at the time of the Chicago attack, and at Prime's request, had remained where she was in order to keep her finger on the pulse of human opinions in an area far removed from the destruction. It also served to continue to keep her off Mearing's radar until Optimus could leverage a more adequate arrangement. Thanks to the technology they were sharing to rebuild Chicago, he now had that leverage, and had recalled her.

Unlike Sam, whose involvement had been impossible to cover up, Mikaela's involvement with them had been removed from, or never made it into any of the reports. This had allowed her to disappear into obscurity, as an Autobot operative, while the official attention remained on Sam. It had been hard on Sam when the Autobots had seemed to withdrawn from him midway through his university education, but unavoidable considering how closely he was watched. Sam had repeatedly expressed his desire for a normal life, but Optimus knew with grim certainty that when the young human had finally received his desire, it had been an emotional blow.

"Hey Mikaela. Have fun?" Will greeted her.

"Long time no see, sister! Look at you! You been working out?" Bobby teased her, noting those curves were definitely packed with muscle too.

"I missed everyone too," Mikaela said, favoring Optimus with a rueful smile over her 'back-to-work' entrance. "And yeah, Bobby. Been busy." She turned to look at Will. "You just remember that every one of these fun side trips you find for me is one more make-up tip I'm teaching Annabelle in a few years."

"I believe that is a serious threat, Will," Optimus said with mock gravity, noting that Patronus had taken an even keener interest at the mention of his youngest charge. "Patronus," he called the mechling over, who looked as though he were trying to determine the human female's threat capabilities. "I would like to introduce you to Mikaela Banes, civilian NEST consultant and Autobot Special Operative."

Mikaela took in the frame that looked too small to her. Skyhammer had given her holos on the new frames, and kept her as up to date as he could when she checked in, but it was still going to be a learning process. "Hi." She walked over to him and looked up his frame to his optics. "It's really nice to meet you."

She had been briefed by Skyhammer that, until otherwise indicated, treating him like a brand new arrival would be better for her own mental health than thinking of him as the great big metal teddy bear that had offered to hold Sam by the back of the neck and shake some sense into him. For her, the jury was still out on that approach.

Patronus cycled his optics in surprise as he regarded the new human ally, who was classified as an Autobot rather than strictly NEST. Even more surprising was how his spark reacted to the human. While she had been on assignment, his spark had never sensed the vague cohort bond with her, not like he had been able to sense with Bumblebee while the scout had been with Sam and Carly in Washington DC. But now that she was present, his spark made it very clear that this particular human was part of Prime's cohort. He could not sense her in the manner he could his Cybertronian cohort-mates, but he was certain that the protectiveness and loyalty he held for them also applied to her. He gave Optimus a surprised look before kneeling down, aware that he had been silent for longer than was socially appropriate to their allied species.

"It is an honor to meet you, Mikaela Banes," he said politely, extending his hand in a human gesture to gently grasp her far smaller one between his thumb and forefinger.

"I bet you say that to all the pretty ones," she said without even batting an eye, just to see how well he handled human interaction and idiom. She gave his finger a pat after he so carefully shook hers. She could feel the other three in the room watching, seeing how this meeting went. Between her break-up with Sam over his need to find a normal life, and her being pulled harder into Autobot society, she had made this her family, and Patronus was the first solid test of her commitment to them. The sheer alien idea of resurrection as a new body with the same soul, and potential for the same memories, had caused her to feel the heartbreak of the human side, for all those lives lost that would get no second chance. But, the Cybertronians were also far fewer in number, slower to reproduce, and the logical side of things said this was a miracle they needed. If she were honest, it was a miracle she needed as well.

Patronus shot another quick glance at Optimus, as though looking for some clue as to why this particular human teeked so differently both from his charges or the other human allies. He clearly was not her specific Guardian, though all of his general and cohort guardian protocols applied to her. His sense of kinship with her was as strong as it was with Bumblebee. He had to use his knowledge of her, limited to a tactical report of her efforts on behalf of the Autobots which was mostly classified from him, and his instincts to judge how to reply to her.

"I believe, outside of Sarah and Annabelle, you are the first woman to truly interact with me in a social manner, as Mearing ignores my presence," Patronus said mildly. "However, as you did not make a gender nuance on your query, I believe I still have to answer negatively, because I do not greet Bumblebee that way."

"He just call Bee 'pretty'?" Bobby asked Will.

"Yup." Will was grinning like a fiend, ducking his head to keep Mikaela from seeing it.

Mikaela tried to keep a straight face, then began to snicker, getting on her tiptoes to reach up and pat the kneeling mech's chest affectionately. "You and me are gonna get along just fine, Patronus. I've been calling him pretty since the first day we met, at least once he upgraded that piece-of-shit alt."

She stepped away from Patronus, who gave an amused grunt to her comment, and turned her attention back to the three who were watching. Confident that the command hanger was more than secure, she asked, "What do we know about the group responsible? Anything yet?"

"We are investigating several groups that have expressed their opposition to our presence in more violent terms, but, as yet, none seem organized or funded enough to have produced a weapon capable of doing the damage it did to Jolt," Optimus stated.

"An unknown sponsoring group or government, then," Mikaela said thoughtfully. "Seems like a good chance that whoever placed the devices is someone already working on the cleanup, since the area is still cordoned off. Maybe I should get involved with the civilian side of the cleanup and just keep my ears open. Someone from NEST might recognize me, though, blow my cover."

"Not many left alive who actually could," Will said grimly. "But a disguise still sounds like a good idea. You never know what information they might have linking you to Sam and the Autobots."

Mikaela turned back toward Optimus with a wicked grin. "Seems like now is as good a time as any to test out those nanites that Wheeljack has been itching to try, hmm, big guy? Think you can convince Ratchet to let me give them a try?"

"I'm still reluctant to experiment with pretender technology on a human, Mikaela," Optimus said cautiously. "But it would allow you a far better disguise than anything human science could provide."

"I'm a willing subject," she said, dismissing his concerns. "Besides, you know how much I love getting my hands in your systems. About time some of your tech gets inside me," she added with an outrageous wink.

"TMI!" Bobby yelled, covering his ears.

"Get a room," Will added.

Patronus gave Optimus another baffled look, looking back and forth between the humans.

"Mikaela apprenticed with Ratchet as a medic's assistant before Mearing's policies forced us to send her away," was the only explanation Optimus gave, which still did not explain the two male humans' seeming discomfort.

"I am certain that having such small, sensitive appendages is a benefit when working with complex internal systems," Patronus commented tactfully, uncertain how to read the emotions and reactions of those around him, and becoming even more confused when Lennox and Epps both began laughing so hard their bodies were shaking.

"Oh, Mikki, it is good to have you back, girl," Epps finally said when he could get out a word.

"On that, we are all in agreement," Optimus said with clear affection, extending his hand to lift her to his shoulder, reaffirming through touch and proximity his connection to the human who was no longer the "youngest" member of his cohort. "I will speak with Ratchet regarding the testing of the nanites, since I am certain that if I do not, you'll go to Que on your own. He, like his creator, is far too likely to conveniently forget our prohibitions with a willing subject in his hands," he added.

"You're finally learning," she said, patting him on his external communications antenna. "About damn time."

"Old 'bots learn new tricks?" he queried, twisting the human saying for himself.

"You ever get old, Optimus, we'll see," Mikaela promised him, smiling at being on one of her favorite perches.

"Let's go see Ratchet together, shall we?" Optimus suggested, making his way toward the hanger door which slid open at his signal. "I think you may need your processors checked when it comes to your numerical calculations, because I am, quite literally, older than dirt."

"You just don't want to have to ask Ratchet all by yourself. You are using me as a human shield, Optimus. I know your game," they heard her tease him as the two exited.

"Wow, I'm hurt," Lennox said dryly. "Didn't even say good bye. How about that?"

"Big guy always chills out when he's got the whole family together. Whole cohort in one place, including the kids? It'll make him relax, though not for long enough." Bobby said, looking at Patronus to gauge his reaction to what he'd just witnessed.

Patronus was curious, because the interactions were, even with Lennox and Epps, more familiar than the usual business mode they had been in since his onlining. He kept his thoughts and words to himself, though, suspecting this was something he needed to see through his new optics, with his spark bonds ghosting their own perceptions to him for a guide.

He knew, from the occasional comment, that the strong connections Prime's personal cohort had formed with the humans was considered odd by those who arrived later, though was accepted easily enough. It was more than obvious that Ironhide had made just as strong a connection as the rest, he thought, glancing at Will.

The historical modules made it quite clear that formal bonded Guardianships, such as that which he held with his charges, were not something shared beyond their own kind, yet Ironhide had initiated the protocols to create a Guardian Bond with an organic family, forever imprinting their bio-energic signatures and DNA code on his spark. He wondered what Ironhide's thoughts had been when he had made that decision? Had he spoken with them about it? Were they even aware of the nature of the bond Ironhide shared with them? He wanted to ask Will, to speak with him more freely and comfortably as he had just witnessed Mikaela and Optimus speaking, yet he sensed Will was uncomfortable conversing with him about Ironhide, and he did not wish to upset the human.

Annabelle spoke with him freely, refreshingly so. She chattered on and on about Ironhide, sharing memories with him, and was never reticent. She often forgot to use his current designation, which caused him no displeasure, though she was scolded by her originators for doing so. She referred to him as her uncle Hide, putting her own human cultural interpretation on the bond they shared. But she had most likely been pre-verbal with no conscious memories of the beginning of his relationship with her family. As far as she was concerned, he had always been a part of her life.

He realized that both Will and Robert were watching him. "Something on your processor, Patronus?" Will asked.

"I have... questions. But they may not be appropriate."

"I know that voice. Out of here, Will." Bobby stood up and tipped a salute of sorts at Patronus, before heading on out to see about catching a flight to go see his own family. It had been a while, after all.

Will steeled himself, thinking back to several heated conversations he'd recently had with Sarah. She had pointed out how much he was holding himself back with Patronus, protecting himself from new grief, and in the process possibly hurting or confusing the very person he was grieving.

It was just still so raw. He had lost his partner, his brother, the other person he trusted to love his family as much as he did. He had watched so many friends die, but watching Hide die with his own eyes, something had broken inside him. He wished it were as easy for him as it was for Annabelle, who seemed to have no issues accepting that Patronus was Ironhide and Ironhide was Patronus and taking him into her life as though he had always been the way he now was.

The connection was there. He could feel it. Patronus never pushed it, and Will held himself back from it, interacting with Patronus professionally, enjoying watching him interact with Annabelle, but not connecting like he once had.

Patronus (and Ironhide) deserved better. Seeing Jolt hooked up to dozens of monitors and immersed in a repair tank in Medical reaffirmed just how much he could lose all over again. He knew he was protecting himself, and he knew it was unfair to Patronus.

He deliberately moved himself close to where the large, dark mech was sitting. Hesitating for just a moment, he climbed up on him easily, scaling his frame with practiced ease to perch on the Patronus's thigh, his legs dangling over so he could look up at the glowing blue optics. He never rode around on the mechs like a little parrot in public, not the way the kids did so easily. It would not do for his men to see that. But in private, or around the farm, he had enjoyed being close. He enjoyed, way more than he cared to admit, that feeling of being safe, protected, and cared for within a unique energy field that he somehow could feel. "Ask away, Patronus. I'm sure you've got lots of questions. Should've told you a long time ago that you could ask."

Patronus looked down at Will, and pursed his lips briefly before letting his curiosity be satisfied. "William, did you and Ironhide ever discuss the ramifications of what his being a Guardian entailed? Did you both choose to go this route? How did it come about? Were you satisfied with it? Does it bother you that I still feel those ties?" The words just tumbled out, as some of his spark's demand to quit sliding around the issue had to be met.

Will looked at him with his heart coming up into his throat, remembering that entire time period, and how much it had come to mean to his family. What Patronus was asking...it meant coming back to the very core of who Ironhide was in Will's life, meant talking about feelings he'd never been good at expressing in words. However, Patronus obviously needed to know, and so he settled where he was, to start talking about Ironhide.

* * *

><p><em>Six months following Mission City<em>

Sarah looked out at the rapidly expanding construction of the bunker in the deep hole now located on her family's historic land, and shook her head yet again with a wry smile. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate what Ironhide was doing, but the scope of the project seemed a bit excessive to protect one human family. But then again, everything about "Will's new truck" seemed rather on the excessive side, including the size of his weaponry, and, if she were honest, his heart...or his spark, she supposed she should say. Not that she was going to object to someone protecting their baby girl, especially when that someone had an arsenal capable of taking out an entire city, but also happened to be ridiculously smitten with her ten-month-old.

She and Will both suspected that after being at war longer than any human could imagine, being around a child had softened something in the fierce warrior. Not that either of them would ever be caught calling Ironhide soft, but both of them could see it. When their baby girl was crawling after him and using him as platform to pull up into a standing position, so trusting of someone who could so easily crush her, Ironhide's entire demeanor changed. He became a giant metal teddy bear. Any objections Sarah may have had to him had melted the first time she had seen that change.

Had her husband never become embroiled with an alien civil war, she and Annabelle might not be in the danger that they now were. But then again, Sarah had enough belief in fate to trust that had Will not gotten involved, things might have gone much worse than they had, so their danger could have been far worse. Sarah was not one to dwell on might-have-beens. She embraced what was. Ironhide, now a part of her family, was her reality, and considering just how much he was adding to their lives, she would never regret it. There were millions of ways to die, after all. An alien civil war was just one of the more interesting ones, and having Ironhide around gave her the hope that even when the Decepticons returned, humanity, and Annabelle, might just make it.

Will had finished unloading Ironhide's bed of the latest materials they would need for their work on the bunker's interior, but instead of getting to work as they normally would, she saw that both he and Will were heading toward the house. Ironhide's voice alone was enough to wake Annabelle (who had just gone down for a nap), and not just because it was as large as he was, but because Annabelle knew it so well, and was drawn to everything about the mech. Sarah hurried out the kitchen door to meet them half way, by one of the many ancient oaks that graced their farm, but which no longer looked nearly so large with Ironhide present.

"Keep your voices down," she scolded her 'boys' preemptively. "I _finally_ got her to sleep. What's up?"

"Ironhide wants to talk to me and you about something he's been thinking," Will said, looking mildly bemused that it was the mech, rather than his wife, asking "to talk" for once. Ironhide was a firm believer in doing rather than asking.

"Annabelle would be involved, but as her lineage founders, I will entrust you to make decisions for her," Ironhide said, watching Sarah. "The matter is deeply personal, and...unique." He looked vaguely uncomfortable as he said that.

One thing Sarah could say for sure: Ironhide never ceased to surprise her. "Sure thing...um...let me just grab the baby monitor and we can talk out here."

"Babe, I think Ironhide would hear if she wakes, even if we were on the far side of the property," Will reminded his wife with a hint of amusement.

Sarah blushed. "True...sorry," she looked up awkwardly at the mech, his scarred, ancient face never ceasing to awe her. She wondered if they should all sit down...not that it would help with the size difference.

Ironhide answered that question for her, folding his knees up in front of him to prop one arm on, the other hand coming rest next to the oak. It did not make him smaller in perspective, but it did make him look less intimidating and ready to shoot everything in sight. She and Will both sat to his side, Will leaning up against the tree, Sarah curled against Will's side.

"What's on your mind, big guy?" Will asked after they were settled. Ironhide looked...almost...fidgety as he turned his head to look down at them, his optics focusing directly on their small forms.

"Sarah, Will...I have been the liaison from Optimus Prime to your family for some months now. In case any of those Decepticreeps come hunting after the humans involved at Mission City. And it's allowed me to get to know you both, as well as the little sparkling."

Sarah and Will gave one another a look. Neither of them had heard Ironhide sound quite so casual before, at least around the house, though Will was accustomed to far fouler language when Hide was on base.

Something in the mech had shifted.

"We've really appreciated having you here," Sarah said hesitantly, suddenly worried that he was about to inform them that his time with them was up.

Ironhide looked from her to Will, then up to the skies as if imploring someone for patience or skill. "I have always been a military build, though there was a time when such function was far more ceremonial," he began. "However, under that classification, I am also a Guardian. My spark is pulled to the protection of specific individuals."

"A Guardian," Will said. "Like Bumblebee is to the kid?"

"You do seem like the protective sort," Sarah added wryly, pointing toward the massive amounts of dirt that had been moved on their property for the construction of the bunker.

Ironhide fidgeted and looked distinctly put out. He would have preferred being considered 'terrifying' or at least 'threatening' rather than 'protective'. Still, Optimus had told him this was alright, that he could answer the pull he felt, so long as the humans agreed. "Very much like Bumblebee is, though Samuel is his first." Ironhide was not going to mourn Bumblebee's Guardian protocols being sidelined for so long. It was just the way the universe had been. "Will, I have come to know you very well. And Sarah, through both my time on your property, and through Will's bond with you, I feel we are close as well."

Sarah bit back the teasing comment she wanted to make about whether he was about to propose to them. "We feel close to you, too, Ironhide. I mean...you are practically all Will ever talks about, aside from Belle. Almost enough to make me jealous," she gave him a wink, trying to relax him.

"You trying to ask us something, big guy?" Will encouraged him, well aware of just how completely unusual his behavior was. Ironhide wasn't exactly a mech of many words.

"I want to be your Guardian," Ironhide blurted, and now the words rang with being embarrassed and so certain of rejection. "It's not a light thing. It means... means giving of myself to you, and asking the same in turn."

This time Will and Sarah shared a more significant look, and Ironhide wondered briefly if the two had some form of bond they could communicate across that Ratchet hadn't been able to detect.

Will spoke for both of them. "I sort of thought you already were...but I take it that you mean something more than just guarding us."

"I've always told you that you stay at our house, you are family, Ironhide," Sarah added with utter conviction. "Doesn't matter what planet you come from. I know Will, and probably most of the rest of us humans, wouldn't be alive if it weren't for you. You know we'd give you anything you'd ask." Sarah deliberately reached out and placed her hand on one of his fingers which rested on the ground right beside them .

"It is far more I am offering now," Ironhide admitted. "I wish to open my very spark to you, writing the code for each of you there, so that I know your needs, and can try to always keep you each safe and well." He reached out, one finger for each, and touched them on their heads. "Annabelle is included in this...but you both knew that," he added gruffly. His absolute gentle care for the tiny human was remarkable to even his cohort.

Will and Sarah each unconsciously reached out and took the others hand, both struck by just how vulnerable the ancient, gruff warrior was suddenly behaving toward them. Neither knew quite what to say in response. It was overwhelming. And whatever 'it' was, they were both certain they wanted it. She and Will were both the types to trust their instincts, and they had yet to be led astray. But that didn't mean Sarah was without questions. She bucked up her courage.

"It sounds like a pretty heavy-duty commitment on your part, Ironhide. I mean...somehow having more of you...in our lives? And Annabelle's? It sounds wonderful, but are you sure that is something you really want with a family of short-lived humans?"

Ironhide cycled air through all his vents, remembering how Prime had phrased this. _"We only have today, Ironhide. They may yet outlive us all. Love them while you may, old friend."_ Those words, weighted so strongly by the grief of losing so many, were possibly the most courageous words Prime had ever uttered.

"I do. Maybe on down through your tiny generations, but assuredly for you, Will, and Annabelle."

"You can't exactly be my Guardian in the field, Hide," Will cautioned, suddenly all soldier. "When we have a job to do, keeping me safe can't be the priority."

Ironhide looked at him with a scowl. "Learned that lesson eons ago, Will. Even if it did give my spark a beating to let Optimus take his own dings."

Sarah whispered a soft "wow," when she realized what exactly Ironhide was saying.

"You...Optimus...you were his Guardian? Or are? Wait, isn't he older than you?" Will asked, feeling like something in his world had just picked him up by the foot and strung him upside down. He had assumed Optimus Prime was...well...about the oldest thing in God's wide universe, and could not imagine him needing any sort of Guardian.

Ironhide let a chuckle escape on that one. "No, he's not. He's even younger than Ratchet, and I knew him when he was just a mechling, too." Granted, that was pushing it, as Ratchet and he weren't that far apart in vorns. "The stories I could tell..." His smile was actually soft and illuminated by memories that were gentle, caring, and humorous. "I took on Optimus before he was Prime, since he had a knack for getting in trouble without Megatron's strong cannons to back him up." Ironhide scowled. "Seemed that one was never close enough to his Prime. Probably for the best for our race..."

Sarah and Will continued to look at him with a mixture of awe and disbelief. It would be easy to get distracted by those tantalizing details, but that was not why Ironhide had asked to talk with them. Which brought up just what it was, exactly, that he was offering and asking of them.

"So...let me see if I have this," Sarah said, her face suddenly blushing. "You were...or are Guardian to Optimus Prime, and you want to be Guardian to our family as well, and somehow...have us be part of your spark...which is like your soul, right?"

"Correct." Ironhide tipped his head at her, a little sideways. "Your circulation system is very active in your facial structure. Temperature of that surface is increased. Is there anything wrong?"

Sarah's blush deepened. "Well...it's just that Will explained to me, and then Ratchet explained in way more detail, how you and the others...um...are intimate...and I'm just not sure I know what you mean by opening your spark to us. Not that I...I mean..." she let her words trail off, now completely embarrassed and certain that whatever it was Ironhide wanted to become to them, she had just convinced him what a horrible idea it was.

Those large optics brightened after a long moment of filtering through her words, using the translators to be certain he was not misinterpreting. "Sarah Lennox, I was given to understand that unilaterally binding bonds existed between you and Will, ones that prohibited recreational intimacy with others. While it is not needed for me to form a Guardian bond, as these are often created with the young of our kind, it can be a pleasurable way to initiate one."

Will found himself choking and coughing slightly, as too many innuendo-driven conversations on the long haul between missions and base came back to him. Had Ironhide really been hitting on him, or was this, like those occasions, one more example of his friend's twisted sense of humor about all things sexual?

"I just had to ask," Sarah said, elbowing Will and laughing nervously in a way that made her feel way too much like a young girl. She almost wished she hadn't asked, because, though it was clear Ironhide was not doing the Cybertronian version of propositioning herself and Will, she wasn't quite sure just how much he was teasing and how serious he was. And while he might not be propositioning, he was very much proposing, in his own way. "So...how do you...and we...go about initiating this bond?" she asked, wishing that everything she said didn't suddenly sound like a bad come on.

"Ratchet feels that simple touch from each of you along my spark's corona will let allow my spark to imprint along your DNA, which is your code, and your bio-energetic signatures." Ironhide looked all around. "Normally, I wouldn't expose myself away from the safety of others, but I do want this, if you will allow it."

"'Hide...you're already part of our family," Will told him with rough affection after he and Sarah once again shared some sort of silent, visual communication.

"We're honored," Sarah added, catching her breath at the thought that Ironhide wanted them to touch his life force, his very soul. "There is no way we would say no to something like this. Just...forgive us if we don't always totally understand. I know what you are offering is...well...sacred, and I'm also sure I don't understand even a fraction of what it means. But to know that you are connected to Annabelle...if something ever happened to Will and I..." she stopped, unable to continue, and quickly wiped her eyes before tears could form.

Ironhide hefted his form up and then onto his knees before leaning down enough to get his torso more on the human level. "Sarah, I cannot bear to think of such a day, even knowing what dangers could still lay ahead." He made his posture open, inviting them both into his hold, as Will moved to embrace Sarah close, protectively, for her words.

* * *

><p>Patronus settled back from where he had eagerly leaned forward, listening to Will tell the story, bit by bit. Will, who could give a briefing in record time, had paused a few times throughout, to be certain Patronus was following everything.<p>

The mechling was digesting all that had been revealed. It explained more than just why Patronus felt so strongly toward the Lennox family. It also added facets to his bonds with Optimus Prime, beyond the shine of being part of his cohort.

"Sarah and I...well...Ironhide already was family to us, as unbelievable as it was that he'd let someone like us so close after just a few months. He...you...became something more, something humans don't have a way of talking about. You asked if we were satisfied with it? And how we feel about the bond still being there? Damn straight, we were satisfied. That isn't nearly a strong enough word." Will gathered up his courage. He'd fought Decepticons. He could handle talking about his feelings. "To say that Sarah, Belle and I loved him...that might not even be a good enough word. We may be...confused...messed up in the head, but when I realized that your spark wasn't gone? I felt like something that had died in me was alive again. I just don't want to mess up the second chance God gave me by trying to make you be him, even though...you are."

"I am," Patronus murmured, softly and reassuringly. "I may not have all the memories, but the more I learn, the more I am certain that none of you truly have lost Ironhide. My spark is his, and there is much of me that feels as if I am walking paths he chose because they are the right paths to walk."

Will nodded, a bit briskly, but there was no hiding the emotion behind it. Then his face broke into a wide grin. "He would tease the slag out of you for trying to pick up Circuit-Su, though."

"Humph. A good soldier doesn't ignore any useful tools," Patronus informed Will. He smiled though, and felt an easing in his bonds. This had been needed, and had done them both good.

"And I'm sure Hide would agree. He just wouldn't let anyone else know that. I must admit...I've gotta wonder if you are like he was when he was young."

"I am told we do not want to meet the one Autobot older than Ironhide known to still exist. Seems he's something of a mix between 'doddering old fool' which was Sideswipe's opinion, and 'harmless old mech' in Jolt's opinion." Patronus managed a fairly human shrug. "I think that many memories might be cumbersome."

"Well, harmless and doddering are the last words I'd ever use to describe Ironhide," Will said, moving up the mech's thigh to lean against his torso, relaxing against the warmth and vibrations of Patronus's systems in a way he had not yet done. Now all he needed was a beer and it would be like old times...

A thought occurred to him, and since this new policy of openness and not being so damn careful was going so well, he decided to ask. "You think that having too many of Ironhide's memories might feel cumbersome?"

Patronus was slow to respond to that, and when he did it was a heavier tone. "I don't know. An overlay, such as Epps suggested, might well be. An integration would feel just like me, but... I think under it, I would still feel as young as I do now, and then they would be cumbersome. Or maybe I am over thinking it all, and my processor would just adapt."

Will nodded, not having any wisdom to add, just the promise of an ear that would listen. "You know...Patronus, if you need to talk about anything, remember that you've got a family. We may not understand it all, but we also don't carry around nearly the baggage, and sometimes that's a good thing. Sarah and I...we'd do anything for you. So would Annabelle, for that matter. You might get some of your best advice listening to that girl."

"Definitely." Patronus smiled broadly. "Annabelle is unencumbered by 'common knowledge' and maybe that is why I find myself reluctant to take on all the memories at my disposal. She does fine with limited knowledge of the past."

"That is the best definition of the 'wisdom of babes' that I've heard, big guy," Will smiled and shifted, making himself even more comfortable against his Guardian.

* * *

><p>Mikaela stretched languidly on a very warm spot on a very large chest sheltered by a very large hand. She did not even have to wonder where the thick, down blanket she was nested in had come from. She had ceased being surprised by the number of human comfort items that could be found in a given mech's subspace pocket.<p>

Being well stocked in everything from snacks, to extra clothes, to first aid supplies, to (in Bumblebee's case) a supply of condoms had become an unspoken competition between Prime's original cohort members. The fact that Prime's cohort was made up of two base-code Guardians, a Medic, and Prime himself meant the competition was stiff.

She was also not the least bit surprised that, having dozed off at some point while "debriefing" (aka catching up) with Optimus the night before, she had not made it back to her temporary room.

Back in the beginning, if someone had suggested that Optimus Prime was not only extremely tactile, but also rather cuddly (to the point of being clingy if he was worried about a cohort member), she would have politely suggested that she had a '71 Pinto to sell that would make for a really reliable vehicle and one hell of a sweet ride.

And she would have eaten her words. Optimus Prime, once he made someone a part of his proverbial family, was cuddly as hell, and had absolutely no issues with adopting her as his human teddy bear for the night.

"So what's going through those processors of yours?" she asked lazily as she stirred.

He took the tray of breakfast items off of the shelf and placed it on the berth, setting her down beside it and shifting himself to lie on his side before answering. A series of quick, directed EM pulses warming the items on it to the appropriate temperatures. He watched with distracted fascination as she took a sip of her coffee and closed her eyes in pleasure at the taste.

"I am thinking about Jazz, and am considering just how pleased he will be that I opted not only to recruit a native into his cadre, but also into our cohort. He was in love with human culture before we even had passed the Kuiper Belt."

She smiled at him, sprawled next to her, completely relaxed on the berth, his face even with her body which enabled her to look him in the optics. He felt her touch a few of the thousands of tiny, moving components that made up his the dermal plating of his facial components . "I'm looking forward to him finally being recovered enough to quit keeping Wheeljack company on Mars," she agreed quietly. "It's about time for you to have your anchor back. But what about the other loved one you nearly lost?"

Optimus knew better than to give her the factual report of Patronus's progress. His spark had welcomed Mikaela in as cohort as surely as it had Samuel, and the human younglings' break up could not change that. He trusted her, and the very fact she was not one of his mechs allowed him to be just that, in these all too-rare private moments.

"If I offline my optics and other sensors, if I only teek him, or simply sense him along the bond, he _is_ Ironhide. I want him back so much that it physically pains my spark, Mikaela. And I fear that I have been deliberately cold and distant out of my own concerns of influencing him to be what I desire rather than who he opts to become."

He paused, weighing his words. "But I also know just how much power my spark has over him. He was my Guardian and a mentor through many of my mechling vorns, and continued to be so even after I became Prime, when it was obvious my Lord High Protector never would complete the bond we were intended to share. If Jazz were not returning as soon as the damaged sections of his core reintegrate, I fear that I might not have given Patronus the freedom of choice that I have. I would not have had the strength."

He regarded her as she carefully considered her words. Prime did not want her pity. Just like she did not ever wish for his. He wanted her to trust her own wisdom, to be an adviser and share her point of view. She always did so, with refreshing honestly, and he valued that deeply.

"I've got to wonder if you've got it all backwards, on all this choice stuff, Optimus," she said, touching the edge of his retracted mask as though asking him to keep it open to her. "Maybe, by not showing him who Ironhide was to you, by not letting him get close to you so he can know Hide in your spark and memories, you're denying him the chance to make an informed choice. I mean...I get the memory core thing. One that ancient would have taken years to integrate. Hell, it's taken Jazz this long, and that was only the damaged part of an intact core. But there are other ways to give him memories, to help him to start to learn."

Optimus vented, considering her words, wishing both she and Jazz had been present when he and Ratchet had made those decisions. "Knowing what you do of our cohort bonds, of the power of my particular spark, do you really think he would have the freedom to make new choices once I let him become close to me? Would he be truly free, with the depth of loyalty inherent in his spark, the Guardian protocols in his core code, and our bond already present?"

"Do you really think any of us have much of a choice once you let us get close? Or that any of us would choose differently, even if we could?" she answered in turn.

"Megatron did," he said, sounding slightly petulant.

"And has Ironhide ever given you reason to believe he is anything like Megatron? That his spark is damaged that way?"

"Never. Ironhide's spark is...whole and undamaged and..."

"And above all loyal to you," she finished for him.

"And a new mechling has no choice about those loyalties!" he growled, his voice becoming dangerous. "Ironhide made those choices, and it cost him much! I can already see it in Patronus. Every decision he makes is made in light of the bonds he already has. He has no true freedom!"

She waited for him to settle from his outburst, never flinching despite how close she was. Instead, she felt honored he would actually show it to her. When she intuitively felt his spark settle from its anger, she spoke. "I don't know how else to say this. I think it's a mistake to think of him as a different mech, Optimus. Yeah, if he were really a brand new person, a blank slate, it'd be wrong to put all of this on him. But he isn't. That's Ironhide's spark in that mech, and it's Ironhide who survived Sentinel's attack. Let him become who he already is and stop worrying so damn much about freedom. Ironhide made those choices and would make them again. You need to quit tying yourself up in knots of this. It isn't really that complicated."

Optimus vented, his hand cupping around her to shield her from some force visible only to himself, perhaps the force that _was_ himself. "I will consider your words, Mikaela, and I thank you for them."

* * *

><p><em>Kil0bit3: The damage was insufficient.<em>

_Fr33d0mHacker: They've tightened up security. We need better supplies to get the explosives in place._

_Kilobit3: Supplies sufficient. More intelligence required._

_Fr33d0mHacker: Got plenty of that. Going after the next one that heads away from base and not into the city._

_Kil0bit3: Superb planning necessary._

_Fr33d0mHacker: We've got it all in place._


	7. Hard Knocks

**Title**: Patronus 7 - Hard Knocks  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Bumblebee, Carly, Jazz, Jolt, Mikaela, Mudflap, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Sam, Sideswipe, Skids, Ratchet, various OC humans  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers, violent & possibly squicky human deaths  
><strong>Summary<strong>: The plot thickens as the Autobots and their allies learn more about the human group targeting them.

**Notes**: I forgot to thank Aniay for beta-reading the previous chapter. Thank you! Also Merfilly has posted a related work as a gift fic to Mmouse15 who bid the Somalia famine auction, Heal Thyself, based on Ratchet's perceptions before and during the story Patronus. Please go read and leave her juicy reviews (says Femme). It can be found at archiveofourown . org / works / 243535 (as usual, remove the spaces because ff . net eats links for lunch)

* * *

><p>Hard Knocks<p>

* * *

><p>Carly had surprised both Sam and Bumblebee by being excited to return to Chicago, despite the trauma of all that had happened there. Reports said the cleanup was almost done, but the real reason she wanted to return was to actually meet and get to know the various Autobots. So when Bumblebee had returned from a brief mission in Chicago and asked them sheepishly if they would accompany him back so he could continue scouting leads on the explosion, she had surprised both Sam and Bee by eagerly agreeing.<p>

Completely ignoring their shocked expressions, she had reminded them that both she and Sam were now drawing healthy State Department paychecks for being 'Autobot Liaisons'. It was about time that they do something to earn their salaries so it didn't just feel like hush money, even if that something was simply making it possible for Bumblebee to no longer feel torn between his various duties. Carly had proved to be an animated companion on the drive, at least as far as Bumblebee was concerned, while Sam felt as though he had undergone another Mearing debriefing with all the questions Carly had asked.

The city wasn't quite in view yet, or at least its suburbs. Chicago did not have quite the urban sprawl of some major cities, but it certainly had a large footprint. Sam was looking forward to getting there, since he and Carly had opted to sleep in the car, after Bumblebee had made it clear by playing Cyndi Lauper that he could drive all night. Sam wanted to stretch his legs, have food that was not the soldier's rations, and a shower.

Possibly he wanted that last more than anything else.

"Hey, Bumblebee, is that Sideswipe ahead?" Sam asked, seeing the oncoming silver Corvette Stingray, escorted by a heavy duty Chevy Silverado that Sam was still not overly familiar with, despite communications from Ratchet. He never even got the first note of Bumblebee's reply as his world turned upside down, and the all too familiar searing heat of an explosion wrapped around where they had been.

* * *

><p>Sideswipe was in full cruise mode, glad to stretch his wheels on some unbroken pavement. He had volunteered to go meet Bumblebee, and insisted Patronus was coming with him. They were both sitting idle from there being no real work for the heavy lifters, along with Prime's desire to minimize the Autobot presence in the city until Mikaela turned up some leads. Patronus had thrown himself eagerly into more training, but mechs with warrior coding needed to move, slag it, and the drive provided a needed change of scenery from cramped hangers that made up their temporary Chicago base.<p>

When the road ahead exploded in a burst of fire and a hail of asphalt, Sideswipe threw himself into mech mode, blades popping free, as he scanned for who or what had attacked his friend. That response was the reason he took the second hit, as a hunter's blind gave way to a pair of humans wielding anti-aircraft shoulder mounted weaponry.

Patronus did not transform, opting instead to activate his alt mode's weaponry and gunning his engine toward the humans. He was obscured by the smoke and flames of the other two explosions, and their attention was still on bringing down Sideswipe. They were bright on his sensors now, so how could he have missed them in the first place? A flimsy human structure should not have obscured them from Cybertronian sensors.

His Guardian spark, and its supporting coding took firm control as he activated weapons intending to incinerate those who would harm his mentor and members of his cohort. But just as he was about to fire the plasma cannon that had emerged above his cab, the sliver of Optimus Prime imprinted on his spark forced him to alter his actions. His own rage fuelled his transformation, and before the smoke had cleared, he had launched himself at the two humans intent on capture rather than obliteration.

He intellectually knew that humans were under the protection of Prime, and that Autobots did not harm them, but deeper than that, under it all, was an awareness of just how disappointed his Prime would be had he followed through with destructive means. He could almost hear the words, feel the waves of emotion that would have included understanding and forgiveness in the midst of disappointment.

He somehow knew it was a mixture of emotions he had felt from his Prime before.

Bumblebee was still rolling, flickers of flame on his undercarriage and around two of his tires, but he was still operational. Sideswipe, more annoyed than hurt, joined Patronus in curtailing the humans' freedom. His blade twitched as if he wanted to spear at least the one who had managed to shoot him, but he held back as Patronus threw aside the humans' weapons with a dangerous rumble.

None of Prime's prohibitions were going to prevent Patronus from scaring the slag out of the humans. He scooped up one and tossed her through the air to Sideswipe, while holding the other one, a male, tight enough to leave definite bruises as he roared, "Who are you working for, human!"

The human screamed as though Patronus had actually crushed him, and then, quite literally, appeared to dissolve from the inside out in his hand, leaving behind only the base organic elements in their simplest form. Shock raced through the mechling. Had he done this? A loud curse from Sideswipe confirmed that the other human had disintegrated as well.

"That was not what I had in mind, and it's on my paint now!" Sideswipe growled.

Patronus grunted in agreement, and resisted the urge to fling the remains off of him in disgust that was as much at himself as at the gruesome result of whatever had killed the human. He was still uncertain what had caused the organic's demise, but he knew Ratchet would want to analyze what was left, with as little outside contamination as possible. He unsubspaced a container and collected the remains, seeing Sideswipe nod and do the same, but with many additional exclamations of disgust.

Sam and Carly, meanwhile, had popped out of Bumblebee's doors, allowing the scout to transform and initiate better fire control, venting smothering gases on the few flames still clinging to him. The damaged mech made human-like coughing noises, but followed his humans toward the frontliner and mechling.

"Eww," was the agreed upon response from both Sam and Carly, almost in unison as they watched the warrior and mechling deal with the remains.

"That was... ugly," Sam continued, "and what the hell's going on that humans are attacking you?" He radiated a protective, yet hostile, energy on Patronus's sensors, registering even more strongly than Mikaela had.

"Slag if I know," Patronus said darkly, missing the look Bumblebee and Sideswipe gave to one another at the tone. He was too busy sweeping the area with his sensors in case other hostile humans were present. He found nothing.

Patronus turned his full attention toward Bumblebee. He was injured, but not badly as Jolt had been. "You require medical attention," he gestured to the deep burns and melted sections of the yellow mech's dermal plating and the fluid lines that were failing to seal. "Sideswipe, go take a look at their shelter," he ordered, not ever realizing he was pulling rank that he did not have. "It shouldn't have obscured them from our sensors. Bumblebee, quit hovering over your humans and sit down. You continue to scan for other hostile forces, human or otherwise, while I patch those leaks. Sam, Carly...stay close to your Guardian. There may be more of those slaggers around."

Bumblebee made a disgruntled noise that was part static, part high-pitch whine, but he did settle on the ground on his aft to start poking at his own injuries. Being a scout meant a lot of solitary work, and that had meant picking up a better grasp of self-repair than some mechs managed. He did not, however, question the line of command in Patronus's tone.

Sideswipe, on the other hand, did hesitate. Patronus was under his protection and nominal supervision. However, it was just what Ironhide would have done, and the experience locked inside that spark, even without memories, was not to be discarded lightly. He flicked an irritated gesture of his hands for the slight damage he'd sustained plus the mess of the human dissolving, then moved on to inspect the hunter's blind.

"Hey, they tried to make me toast; I can help!" Sam rebelled, moving as if to follow Sideswipe.

"Sam, not the time," Carly said before Patronus could growl, pulling him toward Bumblebee's seated position, biting her lip at the mess of fluids. "Help me figure out how to stem the blee...fluid loss," she offered to Sam as a way to tie him down.

"Jesus, Bee," Sam said, looking at the mess that was his Guardian's plating. "How did one explosion mess you up this badly."

"It was a prototype shoulder-mounted thermobaric warhead with a magnesium as the incendiary agent," Patronus explained distractedly as he worked, not even bothering to explain that the majority of Bumblebee's injuries were a result of his shielding being diverted to the protection of his passengers rather than himself. It was simply what a Guardian did, and Patronus would have done the same.

Sam, as if hearing the unspoken explanation, was suddenly the picture of concern. He knew enough to stay away from any energon leaks, which appeared minor and had, for the most part, already sealed. He gingerly reached out and touched one of the charred sections of his Guardian's dermal plating as Carly watched Patronus work to see if she could figure out how to help.

"How much does it hurt?" Sam asked.

"I have switched off my neural relays to the worst of it, so not much, Sam. Do not be alarmed. These are minor injuries," Bumblebee reassured him.

"They don't look minor," Sam muttered. "When is Ratchet gonna get here?"

"He's not," Patronus said. "We can't afford for the only fully trained medic on Earth being attacked by humans. There is a NEST contingent on their way, with Prime, who will transport Bumblebee to Medical in a trailer, since the injuries are not life-threatening."

"I can transform," Bumblebee offered. "Prime shouldn't come either. This could all be part of a plan to lure more of us off base."

"I agree," Patronus said darkly as he placed a tie from his field repair kit on the largest of Bumblebee's leaking hydraulic lines. "But you know as well as I do that Optimus Prime is not going to hide on a base behind the protection of human soldiers. This situation is unacceptable," he vented, his temper clearly showing. "They knew, either that you were on your way or that my mentor and I were leaving the base to escort you."

Before anyone could respond, there was a loud curse from next to the hunter's blind, and then Sideswipe ripped through the flimsy structure with his blade in frustration.

"There was Cybertronian tech in there," he snapped out before either of the other mechs could ask. "A field modulator designed to deflect our sensors. It disintegrated, as soon as I touched it, just like the slagging squishies!"

"But that means..." Carly started.

"There is a Decepticon helping them," Bumblebee finished for her. "We knew that as soon as the attackers disintigrated. There is no human technology that could do that."

"Just got to figure out which one, and put an end to that," Sideswipe growled as menacingly as any Autobot could sound.

Patronus's faceplates indicated complete agreement.

* * *

><p>"And he totally took command, and scrap me if he didn't suddenly sound just like the old slagger. Even his vocal resonance changed," Bumblebee explained jovially. He was slightly high on whatever Ratchet had injected him with, immersed to the neck in a nutrient and nanite-rich solution in the tank Jolt had only recently vacated. The electric-blue mech was still connected to monitors on an extra-large berth to accommodate the youngling twins who were curled up on each side of him with not a micron of space between their plating and his own. They had not been physically separated from their mentor since Ratchet had given them clearance to be with him (with suitably dire warnings should they not allow him proper recharge or did any harm to the injuries that were still self-healing).<p>

"That ain't hard to do," Mudflap commented. "We can make ourselves sound just like our previous frames. We found some recordings of what we used to sound like in the logs..."

"...when the tyrant wouldn't let us in," Skids continued. "Slagging bored is what we were," he said, then burrowed in even closer to Jolt, if that were possible, while his twin did the same.

"Yeah...that's okay, guys. You don't have to prove anything to me," Bumblebee attempted to sound diplomatic rather than horrified.

"Whatever," they chorused, before giggling a little, in mimicry of the humans who were amused at something totally inane. They both cuddled up on Jolt, who stroked each one along the back stuts, shrugged at Bumblebee, and waited to hear what Ratchet would say on the matter.

Only, Ratchet didn't want to voice an opinion. He continued working on one of his projects to one side, as if completely ignoring the younger mechs. That didn't mean it wasn't tearing through his processors. Would he be able to accept that it was Ironhide down to the core, as Patronus matured? Or would the lack of memories they had made together get in his way?

For the first time, in a very long while, Ratchet wished First Aid or one of the other mechs that was a full medic would arrive on Earth, solely for selfish reasons. If there were another medic, Ratchet could take the time to go be alone, to come to terms with everything. As it were, he decided Medical did not need his attention currently; things were very much a wait-and-see and the monitors would contact him if anything changed. He stood up, put his soldering tools aside, and headed out to find someplace private to recharge. That is, if he were smart, though more likely to find some place to brood, per usual.

Their base at Chicago's Midway Airport did not have a lot of options for privacy, however, and he did not dare go too far. Not with some pit spawned human group targeting Autobots just when it finally seemed they had some hope of peace. Granted, the most recent injuries had not been nearly as dangerous as Jolt's, but what if they had been? And with some unknown Cybertronian helping the slaggers, things could get worse much faster. Add that to the things for the CMO to worry about.

Then there were the nanites that had destroyed the human operatives along with the Cybertronian field modulator. The viral nanites, terrifyingly similar to the violently corrosive ones that had been loaded into Sentinel's weapon, had self-destructed. Ratchet had been able to reconstruct them with enough confidence to know that a highly skilled programmer had created the fragging things. He had personally deconstructed the shells of three of the 'Cons capable of that level of coding.

Every mech now had new imuno nanites that should keep them safe, but the fact that Sentinel's weaponized nanovirus had managed to so easily tear through the previous defenses Ratchet had painstakingly set was enough to make the medic keen in frustration and shame. They needed Jazz back, with his coding and viral expertise, and needed him now.

Ratchet finally opted to settle himself in his alt mode and backed in to one of the storage hangers the NEST team used for non-munition supplies. Human soldiers would likely be entering and exiting on a fairly regular basis, but that would not interfere with his recharge, the need for which was making his systems sluggish and sending him into a cycle of despair that would not help anyone. Sinking low on his chassis, he set his timer for a joor, as well as certain parameters that would automatically cause a rapid reboot. He then allowed himself to shut down and defrag.

He onlined after the alloted period to a familiar field mingling with his own, and a sense of comfort and safety. A black Chevy Silverado 3500HD was bumper-to-bumper with him, plating actually brushing against his his own. Guarding him while he recharged, he realized with a bittersweet pang of familiarity.

Without any prelude, Patronus opened a comm line. ::I want you to pick a section of my core for me to integrate. Something small enough for me to be able to integrate during normal recharge cycles, but that will give me enough so that you all won't be so slagging morose. You and Prime aren't nearly as good at closing off the bonds as you think you are.::

The tone was achingly familiar. While the request might have seemed tactless, it was accompanied by a firm push of affection/comfort/desire-to-help across their cohort bond, as well a wellspring of determination to demolish any obstacle that got in his way.

Ratchet huffed air through his engine block with a whirr of his cooling fans. ::And I'm just supposed to magically make it make sense to me, the bits that would fix it enough for Prime to settle down?:: Ratchet asked testily, but his fields and the underlying push along the bond was gentle and appreciative of the demand.

::Well, it's either that or getting my interface modules integrated so you can both decide once and for all whether I am...him, or not, but that scares the slag out of both of you, so a section of my core seems the best option. I want it, too.:: Patronus's response was accompanied with the admission, expressed solely through the bond that he was unsure as well. What if, when they finally renewed their cohort bonds, they truly did come to the conclusion that he was not Ironhide? What would that do to the mechs he could not help but to care so deeply for?

Ratchet sent a surge of warmth and caring, and they both felt a more distant but concerned query from the other mech in question. Ratchet had to chuckle at that, and then pushed with his fields against Patronus in a very calm, squeeze, one meant only to reassure. ::We both care for you just as you are, I hope you know,:: he said over their frequency. ::Give me time to filter the memory file; I'll throw a few keyword searches in and see if I can't get a digest of things that will help you understand us a bit more.::

Wordless affection and gratitude were the only response needed, and Ratchet received it in spades, enough to get a response from both Optimus, and even Bumblebee, whose connection to the cohort had been more tentative since he'd taken on Sam's Guardianship.

::Is everything well, Ratchet? I understood that you were recharging,:: Optimus finally commed on the cohort's private channel, his patient, slightly concerned tone doing nothing to deceive any of them.

::Just Patronus being his usual busy-body, protective self in my personal space,:: Ratchet sent with wry, teasing amusement so both could hear him. He'd discuss the core upload with Prime in person, later, or possibly not. Prime had known Ironhide a very long time, but Ratchet had experienced far more one-on-one with the mech when Ironhide had been willing to relax and let down all his guard.

::Well, perhaps we can convince you to recharge for another joor, since our busy-body is under no obligation to back up and allow you space to transform any time soon. I am personally monitoring those in Medical.:: Prime's response was accompanied with a surge of affection across the cohort bond that was as strong as his spark. Ratchet knew there were countless memories in Ironhide's core of similar instances when the CMO's cohort had ganged up on him.

::Prime!:: Ratchet protested, but Patronus's engine rumbled for just a moment before he settled firmly on his wheels and shut down.

::I think I do need to rest, just a short while,:: Patronus sent with the uncanny tones of Ironhide, and Ratchet could feel his spark bursting with new affection.

Had he been in mech form, Ratchet would have scowled as though he were completely being put upon. Instead, he rudely flicked his lights once, and settled back on his own wheels, letting his systems slip lower with the knowledge that he did need more rest. ::I'll keep this in mind, Patronus, when I bring you in for a check-up.::

* * *

><p>A freckled Irish-American woman, appearing to be in her mid 40s, with a greying red ponytail, wiped the sweat off of her forehead with a dirty glove, leaving a streak of dirt behind. It was an unseasonably hot autumn day in Chicago, without even a breath of wind off the lake the cool things down. She had spent the day removing debris from one of the smaller clean up sites that did not require help from heavy machinery or Autobots, the absence of the latter apparently a relief to several other members of the team.<p>

"Lot more work without them goddamn robots around," a man said with a thick South Side accent. "Not that you're gonna hear me complainin' 'bout that," he added.

Mikaela made a sound of disgust, which the man interpreted as agreement. "Every one of those things is an insult to the people who died in this," her gesture seemed to encompass the city itself. She'd heard enough similar comments on the various sites she'd worked that she wasn't worried about it shocking anyone.

Her statement attracted the attention of a petite woman of Pacific Island descent. Mikaela had noticed the woman, with severely short, dark hair, watching her all day. "You lose someone?" the woman asked gently.

Mikaela felt sick inside lying about it, but the fact was that she had nearly lost someone, just not of the species the woman had in mind, and something about the woman gave Mikaela those proverbial chills, despite her hard work on the site and the gentle demeanor of her question. Mikaela had learned to trust her instincts.

"Yeah...yeah, I did," Mikaela said, looking down at her feet. "I was lucky enough only to be injured by one of those things, but my sister..." she let her voice trail off, as though she could not complete the sentence.

"You don't have to explain," the woman said kindly, putting her hand on Mikaela's arm. "Those of us who are survivors, who lost people but stuck around to make things right have a support group that meets every evening. Why don't you join us? Nothing can bring your loved one back, but it helps to have others who understand."

Mikaela felt horrible intruding on what was most likely a simple grief support group, but her sixth sense was demanding that she follow through on this one. "Yeah...I...I think I will," she said hesitantly, deliberately looking at the wreckage rather than the dark-haired woman.

"Good," the woman said, handing Mikaela a card that had the location of the meeting, in a hotel-turned-refugee center in the Medical District. "It will help," the woman promised, gripping Mikaela's arm one more time, just a little too hard.

"Yeah...hope so," she said quietly.

The woman she had been speaking to was called away by a man who was not part of their crew. She gave one more look to Mikaela, as if to be sure she would come, and then hurried over. Mikaela was able to watch as they talked in very low voices, with minimal but emphatic hand gestures. At one point, the woman seemed to indicate where Mikaela was working, before the man glanced that way, and then left.

* * *

><p>The small, by Cybertronian standards, outpost was slowly being built and improved by the few Autobots in recovery mode from various major injuries, as well as those who had arrived in system and had been requested by Optimus Prime not to land on Earth. A few of the latter had resented not being allowed to fight during the battle in Chicago, but Prime's rationale for keeping a core of Autobots free was a sound one. Someone, after all, would need to rally those still among the stars to free both planets, should the Decepticons have won.<p>

It did not, however, mean that Mars, or Little Rock, as the Autobots had taken to coding it, was an enjoyable duty. Especially for one mech who was nearing the end of a long recovery, or the very enthusiastic engineer currently keeping him company. Both itched to take the small cruiser back to Earth, just to see for themselves all that had passed. Of course, with the Autobots there waist deep in efforts so close to humans, that would have been difficult anyway; the ship, the base, and the Autobots themselves were a tightly guarded secret, known to Prime, his closest advisors, and a single human being.

Thanks to Wheeljack's ingenuity, not even the Decepticons knew what was happening in the series of caves deep in the Valles Marineris.

Jazz, awake and far too energetic during one of his scheduled breaks from memory core integration, was perusing the humanity's Internet via a hacked and rerouted satellite connection that was bouncing off so many different objects that there was no hope of tracing it to their base. He was busy filling in missing parts of his knowledge base, enjoying the culture, and, most importantly, trying to spot intelligence about the group or groups that were responsible for injuring his fellow Autobots. They had not received any recent transmissions from Prime, but the attacks had made the news.

Wheeljack was contently tinkering, again, on new shielding modules to be utilized by their human allies. He was truly distressed by their flimsy, fragile frame structures, and insisted on doing what he could to make them less vulnerable.

He had even managed to not blow anything up this time around, and the noise of him working was a constant reassurance to the socially-starved mech at the data consoles. Jazz knew he wasn't alone.

"Ever downloaded the movie _Ironman_, Jack?" Jazz asked conversationally while simultaneously uploading massive amounts of data, monitoring millions of web chats, and playing a couple hundred online games.

"You betcha. Been thinking about toying around with making a JARVIS for us. Then I get depressed, thinking about being in one place all the time. I mean, I know history says that once, whole cities were sparked and living, but... I'm not sure I believe that either. And a city would at least have constant stimulus. Imagine if you were primarily a data server, with no way to move around and acquire fresh input on your own."

"Ah can't imagine it, but if it suited a spark, might not be so bad. Think about a mech like Red Alert, who's just as happy t' be hardlined t' the monitors vorn in an' vorn out."

"Problem's always judging the spark, now isn't it? Not like Prime can commune with new sparks we manage to make now, not like when the AllSpark gave them to us," Wheeljack pointed out.

"Well, we don' know what Prime's capable of until he slows down and isn't havin' t' be so many things a Prime was never meant t' be," Jazz said wistfully. "But when Ah asked 'bout the film, it was the armor Ah was thinkin' about. Wonderin' about some form of subspaced armor for the humans."

Wheeljack's optics flared bright, and the lights of his finials danced in merry display of his inner thought processes. "Jazz, you know I love you?"

Jazz knew better than to ask Wheeljack if that were an invitation. Not when the engineer had a project on his processors. "Everyone loves me, baby. Ah'm Jazz," he said cheekily instead, his outward good humor hiding his more somber feelings. Just the passing thought of interfacing had his processors and spark turning to his cohort. Slag, he had been away from them for too long, had missed too much, could have potentially saved them so much hurt. Maybe he could skip the final segment of his core reintegration...

Prime would frown and fret, and Ratchet would possibly throw something at him the very first time he did not remember something he should. And, of course, he might not interpret intel correctly, if he had missed nuances or an overlooked connection due to not having the correct memory for it. So that was likely out of the question.

"Hmm. Ankles, wrists, neck, waist..." Wheeljack muttered to himself, thinking about placement of the anchor pieces for such a set of armor. "Ooh, wait... they're so squishy though. Can they handle the fluctuation of activating a sub-space continuum? Hmm. Then again, Samuel Witwicky seems none the worse for wear and we know Bumblebee's transformed around him, which would activate certain sub-space protocols..." His musing trailed off as he shoved the current shield project away and started afresh.

"Sam's different, though. Kid teeks somethin' fierce of the AllSpark, and who knows how that's affectin' his physiology. He ain't exactly keen on gettin' poked and prodded by Ratchet t' find out," Jazz cautioned, even as a line of stray code on one of Google's many servers caught his attention, code that was not in any human programming language he had ever seen.

Wheeljack actually looked up, as Jazz's energy fields shifted, tightening and intensifying. "Found something?" he asked, even as he filed away a processor memo to scan Sam discreetly sometime in the future.

"Take a look at this, Jack," he sent a data burst to the inventor with the locations of multiple versions of the line of code. "Be careful with it. Ah wouldn't have seen it if Ah hadn't noticed a minor glitch in one of my searches. It's hidden underneath multiple layers of human codin' in a place they wouldn't think t' look."

Wheeljack took the databurst, then moved over to his personal console, keying in a few bits of data to run against the code in an isolated environment. In moments, however, he was slapping the kill switch, frying the CPU of the console. There was a reason he used one that was not connected to anything else for testing code; the kill switch was an effective means of destroying bad code before it infected the rest of the system.

"Jazz, my mech? They've got problems creeping around that Web of theirs," Wheeljack said solemnly. "Big ones."

Jazz had been running his own tests in an isolated portion of his CPU that he used for creating viruses while on mission. As fast as Wheeljack had fried his console, Jazz had purged the data that threatened to get past firewalls nothing should have been able to breach. "Slag! Ya got that right, Jack. That is a virus straight from the pit."

"And here we're supposed to keep comm silent..." Wheeljack said in frustration. "And not use the cruiser unless absolutely necessary." That, he knew, was as much because the Decepticons were still in space near Titan, which made flights to Earth tricky when it came to staying out of possible sensor range.

Not for the first time, Wheeljack wished Prime had ended Megatron's existence. However, it was logically argued to him that having Megatron alive had possibly kept the Decepticons from being a larger threat than they were, by not allowing too many factions to spring up and wreak chaos everywhere. Stray communications that they had intercepted indicated Megatron was having a fitful time just making his army still see him as their leader.

"Ah think we jus' found the definition of absolutely necessary, Jack. Question is whether we can do more good from here, an' how we get word there without anyone the wiser," Jazz said, fighting the temptation to send himself to Earth in cometary form as soon as the proper launch window opened. With the viral program hidden in the Internet, it wasn't like he could open up a chat on AIM with Prime, but he also knew he had ulterior motives for a swift return to the planet his cohort now called home.

"Really ought not be you," Wheeljack pointed out, even though he knew his friend was tired of being here. "I'm repaired enough to make the run; you need to finish integration." He fully expected to have the spy-master talk him out of it, though, and was merely waiting for which attack of 'logic' or emotion Jazz would go with.

Jazz didn't disappoint, immediately launching into his argument, his optics bright with excitement to be back on the job. "It's just one more section of core. Ah can set it up t' integrate in smaller segments while Ah recharge. We need ya here, Jack, workin' on those projects for the humans, an' monitorin' and testin' that pit-spawn virus on this end. Arcee still needs some repairin' as well, an' she can't do that t' herself," Jazz explained calmly. "'Sides, you know, an' Ah know that our Prime needs me after what went down with Sentinel," he added, saving the final emotional pitch to round out the logical arguments.

Wheeljack's finials flashed in a familiar pattern that was very much the equivalent of a human sigh. "You make certain you keep integrating those memories, Jazz. I don't want Ratchet pinning me to a bulkhead and demanding why I didn't make certain you did it right!"

"Dontcha worry 'bout a thing, Jack. Ah will protect ya from the wrath of Ratchet. You just take me far enough out of this rock's gravity well, launch me, and Ah'll even integrate a segment on the trip to Earth," he promised, pacing and bouncing up and down on his pedes in excitement.

Wheeljack laughed, and he nodded. "Already calculating telemetry so we can stay in sensor shadow for it." He smiled at Jazz. "You take care of them all, Jazz. They need a break, and the breath of atmosphere you always bring."

Jazz wrapped his arms around the taller mech in warm affection, resting his helm over the Inventor's great big spark. "Ya know it, Wheeljack. Ah'll take good care of 'em. Ah'll especially keep my optics on Que. Ah promise. Sparklet was too young for what went down."

Wheeljack flashed an unhappy light pattern, then nodded. "Thank you," he said sincerely before heading to prep the cruiser for short-flight operations, wishing he could be there for the mech that he and his cohort had been granted by the AllSpark and Prime. No matter how old Que got, he would always be a mechling in Wheeljack's optics, and had been shielded from many of the worst horrors of war by manning a needed research and supply station.

Well, Jazz would be there soon, and that would mean Que would have a good audial to talk to if he needed it.

Jazz had a moment of guilt for talking Wheeljack out of a trip to Earth when the youngest member of the inventor's cohort was in the midst of danger. But there were other reasons why it was important for Wheeljack to remain in his labs. He could do more good from where he was, and the temptation to 'improve' the humans would have been more than the inventor could have withstood with so many potential volunteers around.

Not that Jazz also did not want to see their allies protected, but he and Prime understood the ethics of sharing technology with a developing species in a manner that Wheeljack never would. Cybertronian scientists of Wheeljack's background were distinctly non-proprietary of their inventions. Technology was meant to be shared and benefit all. It was better for Wheeljack to work in a setting where he did not always have to fight against his own base coding and spark while Prime negotiated the fusion reactor that was Earth's politics.

Right now, though, Jazz had a mission to focus on, and that was something that always made life better.


	8. Reunion

**Title**: Patronus 8 - Reunion  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Optimus Prime, Jazz, Mikaela Banes, Mudflap, Skids  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers, mentions of robots in a immature forms (sparklings, younglings, mechlings), mentions of intimacy between non-gendered alien robotic organisms (gender pronouns in this fic are for human convenience only).  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Optimus takes Patronus on a special mission to greet an unexpected, but longed-for arrival.

**Notes:** If you are so inclined, watch for two related mature side stories related to this chapter to be posted in the coming week both on Ao3 under both author names, and femme4jack's profile on fanfiction . net . We will give links in chapter 9.

Speaking of related one-shots. Forgot to mention that femme4jack posted a mature crossover between Ozone and Patronus titled "Debriefing" found on this same profile. Xenophilia warnings for that one. It is set near the end of chapter 6 and sets up Optimus Prime's conversation with Mikaela in that chapter.

* * *

><p>Lennox looked at his tactical officer as the words processed. "Incoming?"<p>

"Whoever, whatever..." The officer flushed a little; he was still not used to what the protocol was for referring to the giant robots. "It was like they specifically picked _our_ eye in the sky to skim past as they came in."

Lennox frowned; they had heard very little from Mikaela so far, other than she thought she might have found the responsible human group. Decepticon activity had been limited to one encounter with a bruiser pair called Runabout and Runamuck. They had been seeking Megatron, and had not heard the latest news apparently.

Unfortunately for them, Prime was not in a lenient mood considering the property damage and loss of life they inflicted in the short time they had been on the planet. When offered a surrender option at being overwhelmed, the pair had continued to fight, and Prime had done as needed. He and Megatron had worked out conventions with a mind toward ending the war, but for some, the war would never be over. Both leaders knew this, and had to accept some losses would still happen. While this had not, in fact, bothered Megatron, Optimus Prime found he had regretted the necessity of deactivating the pair of Decepticons in a way he had not for vorns.

Prime fully hoped such deaths, on either side, would be few and soon be a thing of the past.

"Optimus!" Lennox paged to the larger part of their bay. "Incoming signal that just happened to flash right by our satellite!"

"Receiving the telemetry data now, Will." Optimus had surged forward to view the large screen installed for them on the wall of the bay. He saw the impact site as determined by projected atmospheric entry, and read the data coming back from the satellite concerning angle of approach and speed. "Single entry, not too far away; I will take Patronus. Size indicates one of the smaller class frames."

"Not digging on that, but I also don't have the manpower to really argue the logic." Will hated that, but Prime was definitely a big boy at this game.

Optimus, for his part, did not want to discuss in the more open command center that it was almost certainly an ally. He could not even invite Will to ride along; one of them needed to be on base since Ratchet had patients and Epps was on a recon for another line of investigation into the attacks. The trajectory could have come from Martian space, and with the speeds they were all capable of by manipulating gravity wells in their cometary form, it made sense that one of the Autobots there had come to fill in Prime's ranks.

He was _not_ going to get his hopes up on which one, even if it made the most sense. He knew Jazz well, and even Ratchet's worries couldn't keep that mech back forever from a fight.

Driving at higher than normal speeds to the projected impact site on the Illinois/Kentucky border, the journey would give Optimus approximately three hours on the road with Patronus. Not that this was Prime's reasoning for the choice of his backup. With several injured mechs, he needed to leave Ratchet with those still recovering and Sideswipe to back up Lennox. Patronus had been the only logical choice, and the mechling had already proven himself. That did not mean Optimus had any regrets that he was, at long last, going to be spending some quality time with the youngest...and oldest member of his cohort. Nor did it mean that he lacked anxiety about doing so.

Patronus was living up to his gruff spark again from the very beginning of the trip, by noticing the underlying emotions and absolutely not giving Optimus any way to ease the situation. Of course, the mechling was still sorting through the very small memory integration Ratchet had chosen for him, which was having its own effect on him.

The memories Patronus now possessed included some of Ironhide's most recent, up to the battle in Egypt, which was the last time the weapons specialist had done a core backup (much to Ratchet's dismay, though considering the standard was once each vorn, it could have been much worse). Ratchet had determined that a few relevant parts of the AllSpark search, centering on their discovery of Cybertronian-based technology on a small planet they would come to know as Earth, and all of Ironhide's memories once they had landed on their new home would be the most useful to the mechling. This was especially because the segment included some of his memories of the short-lived humans he was bonded to as Guardian. Yet even that minuscule amount of Ironhide's core had given the mechling much to digest and come to terms with, and his integration of it was still incomplete.

::You think it is Jazz,:: Patronus finally broke the emotion-laden silence that had lasted through the southern suburbs of Chicago. The mechling was deeply disturbed by his new memories of the injuries that should have killed the missing member of their cohort. Patronus now had his own measure of Ironhide's guilt surrounding that near-loss, and the horror over the impact such a loss could have had on his Prime.

Optimus reached out tentatively to stroke reassurance along their cohort bond, but his engine throbbed with suppressed emotions. ::It is highly likely. However, it could be Wheeljack. I doubt Arcee is up to such events yet, and any others there would not yet be acceptably briefed on Earth living yet, so I doubt they would have been given them clearance to come.::

::Can you feel if it is him?:: Patronus asked, _Or do you shut him out as strongly as you attempt to do so with me?_ He kept the second part of his question firmly locked within himself.

A memory, unbidden, flashed through the mechling's processors. Megatron, dead at the hands of a frail organic. There was victory, grief, sympathy, and a sense of loathing at the term _brother_ used by Prime to address the one who should have been his Lord High Protector. There was something in that memory, Patronus realized, that should help him understand why Optimus was held so much back, even from his cohort.

Optimus hesitated, but when he answered, his voice was strong. ::Not yet. We have not had much in the way of contact since the incident.:: Never, for all his vorns, would Optimus admit that it was seeing Jazz's broken body in his memories that had almost caused him to take advantage of Megatron's surrender to deliver the killing blow. How many times had Optimus fought Starscream with a care to not permanently end that mech's existence, strictly because he knew the madness that could fall on either he or his brother with the loss of their anchoring partner?

Not that Megatron would ever have admitted to having anything resembling a cohort bond, even one as twisted as that which he had with his Air Commander.

::With the damage that was done to his spark, we will need to renew our bond before I can truly feel him again. I know he is functioning, but not if he is close,:: Optimus explained before Patronus could ask, feeling the question echo through the very much functioning bond he had with Patronus, whose spark had not nearly guttered as Jazz's had.

That gave Patronus something to contemplate. He could feel both Prime and Ratchet strongly, despite the guarded nature within the links. Bumblebee faded in and out, dependent on his proximity and how in tune with Samuel he was. However, none of the three had even offered to reaffirm the bonds in the manner of creators to their creations, a process he had discovered in researching the nature of bonds.

Ratchet's handling of the memory core download provided him the best clue why: they neither wanted to trap him any more than the bonds already had, nor did they did not want to let him go.

Part of him was ready to explode in frustration because his own need to reaffirm those bonds was so strong, despite their desire to shield him from something he, at spark, did not believe he needed shielding from. Yet another part, which was supremely protective of his cohort, demanded patience for their sake, of which had been in short supply as of late. It also came down to the fact that in the core of his spark, he trusted the members of his cohort, and so he would wait until either they initiated the renewal themselves, or he could wait no longer.

It did not mean he was happy about it or would not lose his temper as he became increasingly aware of just how much his cohort was shutting him out.

::I know he is important to you, beyond just the importance of cohort, but not why,:: Patronus commented, knowing he was pushing. At least understanding this other aspect of his cohort might help ease some of his own questions and confusions that were worse now that he held a few of the precious memories from Ironhide's massive core. Not to mention that he was frustrated enough with Prime's continued distance that he was not inclined to go easy on the mech.

Optimus Prime could feel his spark responding to Ironhide in a bad mood, already gearing up to placate and, if necessary, calm him down. He then remembered this was Patronus, and felt that promise to himself press in on his processor. He would not force his old friend back into the tenuous role of protecting him. ::Jazz volunteered to step in as a counter-balance against the fact I am influenced by Megatron's thinking on the unconscious level,:: was the answer he chose. It left out a wealth of more personal feelings, complications he did not wish to burden Patronus with.

Patronus examined what he knew of Cybertronian history and political structures. Megatron should have been the Prime's Guardian. Yet he now knew that Ironhide had stepped into that role and had never truly left it behind. Yet, it was apparent that some connection still remained between the Prime and his Lord High Protector.

He allowed silence to settle between them for several minutes, lost in his own few memories. ::I had assumed the Guardian bond had never been initiated between you and Megatron. I thought that was why I share that bond with you as well as cohort,:: he finally offered, knowing full well that Prime was unlikely aware that Patronus even knew they shared a guardian as well as a cohort bond.

Optimus's engine rattled a little in surprise. He then forced it back into an even pattern, though his path took him slightly closer to the Silverado. ::Megatron and I began the process but never completed it. As for Ironhide...the fact you still feel that, is possibly because we forged the bond when I was very new to living in the main palace, and missed the freedom I had possessed before Sentinel Prime took me in.:: Just saying the name of his teacher brought up more pain in the cohort bond than Prime would ever have wanted Patronus to feel from him, but Optimus had, with all his spark, believed in his teacher. And it had cost them all so much.

::I can't ease any of this for you if you don't slagging let me in!:: Patronus finally erupted, the pain, grief, and near constant guilt that were always an underlying presence in his spark, no matter how hard Optimus tried to hide it finally getting the better of the mechling. ::You had better not be this slagging careful with Jazz if he is actually here.::

The bond filled with overwhelming recognition again, and Optimus had a very hard time not pushing the pace to outrun a situation he didn't want to cope with yet. However, he was Prime. And unlike the Fallen, unlike Sentinel, Optimus accepted that sometimes, even most of the time, his own wishes had little to do with the welfare of his people.

::Patronus. What I feel concerning recent events is not something you should be subjected to, and I apologize for what has leaked free,:: Optimus told his one-time Guardian and life-long friend, despite the youth of his new form. ::I truly do want what is best for all of you, and part of that is maintaining myself apart, as much as I can, so that none of you have to endure what the war does to me.::

::Frag it, Optimus, I'm less than a single orbital cycle old and even I know that is a load of slag. We're cohort. I'm supposed to feel it, and no matter how noble you think you are supposed to be, even I know mechs aren't meant to cope alone!:: Patronus engine revved hard with his statement, his need to find a target and obliterate it growing stronger with every self-sacrificing piece of scrap his Prime offered. The core of his spark was blazing in objection to it, demanding that he do something to shake Prime out of his isolation, and do it now.

The larger truck throttled down, not much, but enough to make it clear he was listening. ::Do not ask more of me than I can give you, Patronus. My actions in all this brought us to this point. Until I have come to peace with it, I can only offer you my friendship and guidance while you find yourself.:: Optimus's voice was firm, yet in the bond, there was a soft, gentle plea for _Ironhide_ not to push this. There was an acceptance that it was right for the mechling to listen to his spark on the matter, but that it was still too soon for the leader to go forward.

::Can't 'face any sense into you yet, anyhow, even if I at least remember what it's like now,:: Patronus muttered, with definite intention of changing that overlooked part of his upgrades soon. ::I won't push you,:: he promised, Prime's plea along the bond doing more than any of his words could to back the mechling off. ::At least I won't if I know you are opening up to someone. You're not going to find peace about this alone. My spark knows that.::

::Stubborn old mech,:: Optimus sent with only a slight hesitation for using the age-old endearment that had stood between them for vorns upon vorns. ::Now, if we don't kick it in the aft, Patronus, and it is Jazz, he'll have found a transcan before we get to him and be racing this way.:: He wanted the conversation at an end, and forcefully changed the track on purpose. Besides, he had painstakingly decided on a new model for his spymaster and brought it along, just in case.

Patronus throttled his engine in response, knowing it was time to stop pushing having said his piece. He pulled ahead of the Peterbilt, gunning his engine. ::Think you can beat a mechling there? My spark may be old, but my systems are, as Sarah Lennox would say, young as a spring chicken.::

Optimus wound up his own engine, and let loose, causing the vibrations to ripple through them both as he caught up to the other. ::More than a few tricks under my hood, little truck!:: he sent back.

As difficult as the conversation had been, there was something delightful, and easing to Prime's spark to hear Patronus sputtering about being called 'little' as he ate the semi's dust.

* * *

><p>The humans would have poetically called it a <em>falling star<em>, but never had a meteorite streaked in with so much style as it corkscrewed its final approach, sliding to a halt merely a hundred yards from where two figures stood awaiting it, their optics blazing in the night. They were surrounded on all sides by acres of harvested soybean fields that bordered the rolling hills of Shawnee National Forest. There was not a single structure in sight.

Patronus reached out to teek the protoform unfolding from the cometary ball, and was hit with a strong wave of familiarity, fresh energy, and throbbing passion for life. There was no doubt in his processor just who this was.

"Welcome home, Jazz," Optimus Prime said, keeping his voice completely even, despite the fact his optics were devouring the whole form, the welds now faded and scoured down to hide beneath the plating. "I borrowed a suitable alt from the impound of abandoned vehicles for you."

"Did ya, now?" the small mech said, closing the distance and without any ceremony, leaping to climb up the large mech's frame to place himself helm-to-helm with his Prime. "An' what if Ah don't find it suitably stylish?" he asked, his faceplates breaking into a wide grin.

Confronted with that exuberant energy once more, and being climbed as capably as his human allies now could, Optimus had to let go of his reserve and actively put his arms around the smaller mech, both to hold him close and support him, mask never once between them.

"As if I would ever choose something to limit you from being as beautiful as you always have been?" Optimus asked him softly, leaning his helm in against Jazz's. "Plenty of other options if you choose not to like my choice, though," he said in teasing tones, as if challenging Jazz not to appreciate what his Prime wanted to see him as.

Patronus could all but see the way the fields were knitting into place between the pair, close contact quickly erasing Prime's resistance. The words Optimus shared of how Megatron influenced his thinking came back to the mechling, making him wonder if perhaps it was as much that influence wedging Optimus from his cohort with as it was Prime's own guilt.

Seeing Prime's anchor, so easily beginning a process that had been at a stalemate since Patronus had onlined eased something deep in the mechlings spark, even as it also caused him no small amount of wistful yearning for something his memories now only contained snippets of.

Not wishing to interrupt the reunion, Patronus moved toward the trailer to open it and remotely signal the Porsche inside to back out. He briefly wondered what Optimus would have done had it been a completely different mech to arrive. Likely they could have chosen a new mode once in the city, or merely ridden inside the trailer as well. Optimus had clearly dared to hope, considering the vehicle he chose.

Jazz could feel so much in his Prime, much that needed to be aired out, and not just about himself. However, as much as he had permitted himself this indulgence, there was work to do as well. He let his fields talk for him, staying close even as he leaped back down to his own feet and studied the sweet set of wheels rolling back from the trailer.

"Somethin' or someone made this planet jus' t' let me have all mah dreams come true," Jazz praised, loving the sleek lines of the car. "Don't scratch it now, 'Hide mah mech."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Patronus said, his face plates breaking into a grin at the instant familiarity and the use of the designation he was becoming increasingly convinced was, at least in part, his own, save for the discomfort and worries of others.

Prime started to comm Jazz, knowing good and well he would have received the information about Patronus in the last data feed encrypted for Mars. However, Patronus seemed too at ease with it, and Jazz was already enraptured by the car with the 'kicking' sound system, as one of Lennox's men had described the after-factory installation.

Jazz transcanned the sleek, black hybrid prototype as though he were caressing it, before making a dance of breaking into thousands of gracefully moving parts and reforming into a silver version of the same. The second Porsche Spyder Hybrid 918 bounced up and down on his wheels, as though testing them out, before gunning his engine.

Optimus Prime would never be able to not treasure Jazz, not after all they had experienced, and especially not after that fateful battle. However, the sight of him in a new alt-mode, as excited and excitable as a freshly upgraded sparkling, made him smile and relax in his frame even more than the physical greeting had.

Jazz was undeniably back.

* * *

><p>Jazz made short work of briefing Optimus on the discovery of the Cybertronian virus running deep in the humans' Internet, as well as getting briefed on what had transpired in both attacks and the intelligence that had been gathered. It left them with the better part of the drive back to Chicago, even going at the speeds their advanced engines were capable of on largely empty nighttime roads. Jazz was practically doing circles around the slower trucks.<p>

::So let me guess,:: he abruptly changed the topic, directing his signal to Patronus but making sure that Optimus was patched in. ::He's been morose, guilt-ridden, an' drivin' ya slaggin' nuts tryin' t' make sure he don't influence ya to become somethin' ya already are.::

Before Optimus could protest or Patronus could agree, the silver mech continued, this time at Optimus. ::An' this one has been pushy as all get out, won't take 'no' for an answer, and don't know when t' back off an' give a mech his space t' figure slag out, an' the only thing keepin' ya from takin' him t' the sparin' grounds an' beatin' him into the ground is that he's so fraggin' young an' Ratchet would have your aft for it.::

The leader and his youngest/oldest cohort member had to exchange a flicker of bemusement along the cohort bond, and for a moment, just then, it was as though Optimus were the young mech sneaking out to get a feel for the public and being pursued by his dutiful bodyguard.

::Something like that,:: Patronus muttered in distinctly Ironhide-ish tones.

::Possibly,:: was Optimus's agreement.

::Hmm, good. Just makin' sure mah processors are still workin' right an' I could read a situation,:: Jazz continued jovially. ::Still missin' a few of mah files. I know 'Hide here knows how much that can mess with a mech.::

::That's the truth,:: Patronus said wearily. ::Can't take the time to bring it all in, though Ratchet gave me my most recent ones.:: Of course, they had also included having to live through Prime dying, and Patronus couldn't help but wonder if that was also part of Ratchet's ulterior motives.

::Jazz, our newest cohort member was designated Patronus, as the data file surely included,:: Optimus reproved just slightly, as he did not want to fracture the mechling's personality.

::An' that's just a fine, fittin' designation for 'im. But mah spark says he's also 'Hide, an' you an' Ah can both feel how it eases him t' have someone finally acknowledge it. Ah will call ya whatever ya want t' be called, Patronus, includin' _sweet spark_, _shiny aft_, or _Annabelle's big metal teddy bear_ if ya like.::

Patronus had never, in his short existence, or in what he could recall of Ironhide's last memories, been so glad to be in vehicular form so the infrared increase in his face plates did not show his embarrassment.

Prime made it worse by chuckling slightly. ::Jazz has a point, and I am sorry, 'shiny aft'.:: He managed to make the sobriquet sound so sincerely appropriate.

Patronus revved his engine sullenly, but the cohort bond gave away that despite his embarrassment, he was at ease in a way that he had not felt since onlining. ::Either designation feels appropriate to me,:: he admitted. ::Annabelle calls me Ironhide every day and it has yet to have caused me any sort of glitch in my personality matrix. But if either one of you ever calls me 'shiny aft' again, I will personally show you just how much of Ironhide is in this spark.::

::Hmm. Maybe after an upgrade or two, then,:: Prime sent, absolutely without any tone of innuendo, and yet... Jazz knew, and Patronus could guess it. Of course, outside of Sunstreaker, Ironhide always had been Prime's favorite sparring partner, with care lavished afterwards in privacy.

::If that's a promise, Ah'll call ya 'shiny aft' every day, Patronus,:: Jazz gleefully sent before speeding ahead of the trucks with a roar of his finely tuned engine, music blaring from a sound system far more advanced than the one installed in the Porsche Optimus had brought along.

::Prime!:: Patronus protested, much as Ratchet had not that long ago, much as Ironhide had been wont to do in the old days. And for once, all the reminders seeped into Prime's spark without obstacle, setting him at peace.

* * *

><p>The twins, in order to give Jolt enough space for the mech to actually have some needed privacy, had been given the task of training with their holo-forms and riding through the parts of the city that were reopened.<p>

Their mission, also considered training, was to listen and watch for signs of unrest, or for Mikaela's encrypted beacon. It was not considered a heavily dangerous duty, especially once Que introduced a countering shield to further mask their Cybertronian signatures. The inventor definitely had Wheeljack's flair for whipping up devices as needed, with a shade more restraint on their application.

They were currently patrolling the area around the Medical District, chatting back and forth on their own encrypted comm, but even more so through the bond they shared as twins. It felt almost like their were talking to themselves, their thoughts and feelings were so close to one another. Suddenly, a signal cut through their unique brand of shared humor and worries. It was a distress signal, from Mikaela, originating from an alley behind a nearby hotel.

::Act cool, and... ::

::...act lost.::

With that plan immediately in effect, the pair made their way as quickly as they could without drawing suspicion, until they got to the source of the signal.

The scene that greeted them chilled their sparks. Mikaela Banes was collapsed, halfway down a stairwell that led to some dwelling or business under the street's surface level. Her pulse was racing, respiration shallow, and she was bright on their infrared with fever. Most disturbing of all was that she was no longer disguised by the nanites that had shifted her appearance on the cellular level, something that should not have taken place until she was safely back in Medical under Ratchet and Que's careful supervision.

::Cover me,:: Skids told his brother. As Mudflap blocked off the alley way as best he could, Skids flipped swiftly into mech mode and rushed over to the woman who belonged to the Prime's own cohort. "It's me, Skids, Mikaela. Gonna pick you up, put you on Mudflap." He didn't want her spazzing out the way some humans did when offered a helping hand. Luckily, there was enough flexibility in their transformations circuits for the handles to grip Mikaela, instead of the other way around, and a strap came up over her after Skids had her settled in place on the motorcycle.

"We'll get you home, and quick before you burn a hole in my leather." Mudflap wasn't sure he was entirely teasing her, unconscious as she was.


	9. The Big Chill

**Title**: Patronus 9 - The Big Chill  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Bumblebee, Jazz, Jolt, Mikaela Banes, Mudflap, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Skids, Que, William Lennox  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>WARNINGS<strong>: DotM Spoilers, mentions robots in immature forms (youngling, mechling), alludes to interfacing between non-gendered robots.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Mikaela's camouflaging nanites are fighting a losing battle. Can her cohort save her in time?

**Notes:**In case you missed it, we posted two "Patronus Outtake" one-shots of the mature variety this week: Healing (Optimus Prime/Jazz, spark) and First Charge (Patronus/Sideswipe, tactile, field, PnP). They can be found under this same profile in "Patronus Outtakes".

Thanks to Ultharkitty for giving us permission to use some of her ideas from her awesome DotM fixit story To Be Continued, which you can find at archiveofourown . org / works / 224023 (remove spaces).

_Meister_ is the name used for Jazz in the Japanese cartoons.

* * *

><p>Jazz had to run to keep up with Optimus's long, fast strides across the tarmac to Medical. In a single moment, his Prime's field had tightened in agitation, and worry spilled across their bond. It seemed that all he had done to relax and re-center the hub of his cohort had come undone with a single comm.<p>

::What's the status, boss-bot?:: Jazz asked asked, taking on the mantle of lieutenant and SiC effortlessly.

::Something has gone wrong on Mikaela Banes's mission. She transmitted a distress beacon and is being transported by the twins, apparently gravely ill and no longer concealed by the camouflaging nanites.::

Jazz instantly switched into his mission mode. Mikaela was SpecOps, under his command. ::Do Ah need t' run interference at the extraction site?:: he asked, already syncing with the NEST server and calling up a list of humans whom he could send in. He simultaneously began making adjustments to his own holoform in case it were needed.

::She was found alone and, according to the younglings, unobserved. Contact Lennox and make arrangements for a team, as many as you think you need, and then stand by with them for more information,:: Optimus paused, receiving another comm. ::Belay that. Ratchet wants you in Medical. He fears the issue may be with the nanites and wants you there in case there is something viral involved.::

::Understood, Prime,:: Jazz responded, sending a message to the human handling the comms to put the designated team he'd selected on stand by to await orders.

A third mech converged on the Medical hanger at the same time that Optimus and Jazz arrived. Que had been summoned by Ratchet as well since he had administered Wheeljack's nanite creations, having programmed them from his creator's notes.

"Those nanites should not have deactivated without an input code from Ratchet or myself," the young inventor began to explain, his hands moving and vocal indicators flashing in emphasis as they entered Medical.

"Not unless they encountered a viral nanite infection in her system and had to move from their camouflage function to defense. They can't do both, not without drawing dangerously on her cellular mitochondria that are powering them along with their host cells," Ratchet tersely explained, never looking up from making preparations for his patient's arrival. A human-sized tank with multiple feeds and monitoring equipment was on top of one of the medical berths. Ratchet was filling it with some viscous substance via a nozzle that emerged from the end of one finger.

"What can we do to assist, Ratchet?" Optimus said, certain he was about to be evicted from the medical bay.

"If you are going to be here, stand guard at the door and keep any distractions out, including yourself," Ratchet ordered, firmly in command of his own domain. "Jazz, I want you to look at the coding of whatever is in her. Same with you, Que. We may have very little time if if the defenses I coded into them are not holding."

"Ah'm familiar with the little buggers 'Jack made. Let me see what ya added to 'em," Jazz responded, nodding when Ratchet handed him a vial along with a data-squirt of all of the schematics and coding of the microscoptic machines that were small enough to implant themselves into human cells. The saboteur, an expert in nanite-based viral coding, immediately took his place at a work table.

Optimus, his spark swirling with concern for the most vulnerable member of his cohort, positioned himself by the doorway as ordered. His sensitive audials picked up the sound of two Honda Interceptors making their way toward base at high speed. Ratchet joined him at the door to meet his patient, along with Jolt, now on his pedes and ready to distract, soothe, and remove the youngling twins from Medical when they arrived.

Mudflap and Skids arrived in a tight tandem maneuver, the unencumbered twin transforming in mid-roll to help get the precious burden off his brother. Closer to Mikaela's size, that was actually the better part of the plan, Ratchet decided.

"Get her over into that," he ordered, indicating the tank. It would help lower a fever, and, if needed, cool Mikaela to a point that would stop her own bodily responses for a time. Ratchet had studied cryonic procedures, along with other forms of care, and thought highly of the human reaction to cold temperatures when medically induced.

The medic initiated scanning as Skids gently slid his fragile burden into the tank of ice-cold gel. Mikaela's cellular functions were breaking down as the tiny power plants in the overtaxed building blocks of her body had to support the struggling nanites fighting off an infection of foreign machines.

The situation was exactly as he had feared. Mikaela had somehow become host to what had to be the same nanites that had destroyed the two humans who had attacked Bumblebee and Sideswipe. The camouflaging nanites had kicked into defensive mode to prevent the foreign machines from gaining entrance to the host cells. But the presence of Cybertronian tech in her body must have activated the new machines, and they were attempting to take her apart on the cellular level. The stress on her body from the defensive nanites was high, as well, as they took more than her mitochondria could give while also powering her own cells. But he did not dare activate the fail-safe to shut them down, or the invading technology would literally take her apart.

Jolt gave a small, silent call to his charges, and they flocked to him, worried, but obeying as he ushered them out of the medical bay. Both they and their mentor smiled brightly as Optimus said, "Well done," and gripped each twin on the shoulder as they exited.

Ratchet swiftly scraped a sample of Mikaela's skin cells into a vial connected to a medical datapad and handed it over to Jazz to examine the invading nanites. "Figure out how they are powering themselves," he added.

"Que, we need to find another way to power the nanites or deactivate them, or they are going to take her apart as effectively as the invaders," Ratchet ordered, even as he made a decision. Primus forgive him if he was wrong, but simply chilling her was not going to be enough to give them the time they needed. Some of her cells had already been torn apart by the invaders, and by all appearances, the defenders were not going to hold for long. His finger formed a tool to insert a tiny tube into his patient's femoral vein to send bitterly cold saline into her body and increase the rate at which her core temperature was dropping.

"Solar radiation...no, you are trying to cool her." Que frowned, running through the various methods he knew could power them, swaying slightly as he considered. "Direct coupling with one of us? Wait; Wheeljack's designs on that haven't been implemented yet." He frowned a little, before his displays lit in revelation to himself. "Will a low level static discharge into the gel affect the temperature too adversely?"

"As long as it doesn't provide extra power to the invaders as well. We can't risk it until we know how they are drawing their power," Ratchet replied as he used his own EM fields, carefully manipulated through a modulation device implanted in his hands, to support the slowing of Mikaela's vital functions. The induced extreme hypothermia was bringing her vitals, even her brainwaves to a standstill. She would soon be indistinguishable from an organic who was dead, and by every medical definition of human life, would be. Through the cohort bond, he could feel Optimus startle in concern as he sensed the shut down of their organic member. He sent a quick reassurance, then blocked Prime altogether. Unlike a Cybertronian, who once their spark was gone could not be brought back, Mikaela could, and by the mysteries of the human soul, would still be the same person. Meanwhile, the extreme cold would slow all metabolic processes, including the breakdown of her own cells while they found a way to purge her of the technology which was killing her. He just had to work fast enough.

Jazz had begun analysis immediately, taking what he remembered of the code buried in the Internet to work from, theorizing they held the same basis. He multi-tracked the analysis; primary priority was given to stopping their power-management with a secondary one given to isolation and destruction of their base coding.

"Are the nanites invading her systems electromagnetically shielded like all of our main systems?" Que asked. "I specifically coded ours for her to be able to be killed by using the right frequency of EMP."

"They're shielded, slaggin' effectively, too," Jazz called over.

Most of Ratchet's attention was on inducing and monitoring the cryonic state in his smallest cohort member, but his processors were also tracking the suggestions and coming up with his own. Direct contact with spark energy could power the defensive nanites, but would likely give a boost to the invaders as well.

"Ah have it!" Jazz suddenly announced, glad he had done so much analysis on the viral code on the Internet while in transit to Earth, and had not stopped running that analysis even as he'd attended to Prime upon arrival. "The code that activates the slaggin' things is triggered by close contact with spark energy resonance. In other words, they are designed to kill their host if they are captured and directly handled by one of us. After that, they self-destruct, but I can tweak that code so the self-destruct subroutine is prioritized, then we can purge her of everything with an EMP once they've broken down."

"So it wasn't the other nanites that triggered them," Que said, nodding in understanding. "It was the residual resonance of her being a part of Prime's cohort."

Que's words, sinking in with the guardian of the doorway, were not exactly what needed to be heard by said mech, but Prime filed it away impassively, on alert and refusing to be as obviously concerned as he was.

Ratchet didn't say anything so much as transmit a glyph of impatience/action/now at Jazz in regards to the plan at hand. He had to maintain the monitoring and had never been the best for doing more than simple processor hacks to reroute self-destructive behavior.

Jazz flicked an answering glyph to the medic, indicating he was already doing even as he had said it, testing his coding against the sample to make sure he would not trigger any secondary defenses in the nasty little things. His memories of Mikaela were all favorable, she was cohort, and her well-being had vital importance to the mech that had gone slate-blank by the door.

"Alright, Ah'll insert the tampered nanites an' they'll transmit the codin' change to the others," Jazz announced when his simulations and tests were successful. "But then we'll have t' give 'em a power boost to reactivate 'em from the cold. They were powered by the kinetic energy of her own cellular movement, but can adapt to nearly any available power source. Genius little slaggers."

Jazz couldn't help but to both hate and admire a brilliantly coded virus when he found one, and was already filing away ideas of his own for viral weapons he knew he'd never get approval for, but would provide a needed challenge for his ever active processors nonetheless. Besides, one never knew when such a tool might be needed, approval or not.

Ratchet carefully ignored Jazz on the discussion of the nanites' capability to a point. That was information even Ironhide would shield himself from, to protect Prime from knowing some of the more desperate measures their spymaster sometimes had to invoke. "I suggest exposing her to spark energy, to reactivate them, if at all possible. I'd rather not bring her up from suspension so quickly."

"It would be the fastest way to reactivate them that would still be safe for her," Que agreed. Jazz had already positioned himself on the opposite side of the tank as Ratchet, and after receiving a quick signal of approval from the CMO, injected the reprogrammed nanites into the IV fluid line, sending a burst of code to activate them.

Ratchet could not really expose himself in the midst of monitoring the young woman, and Jazz's processors were tied up monitoring the effects as well. They did not have to wait long, though, because no sooner had the code begun to spread among the infectious nanites than Prime was closing the distance. Perhaps, Ratchet mused, that was best. He still had not investigated the full effect of the Matrix on Prime's resonances, but it certainly couldn't hurt in this instance.

After a quick glyph burst from Jazz giving the go ahead, the leader of the Autobots leaned over the tank from the head of it, chest plates cracking open slowly to spill out the light from within. It pulsed hard and bright, so recently recharged from the weariness that had plagued him. The spectrum was different from all other lights, Ratchet noted again, the impartial observer at this point. As the light bathed Mikaela's face, Jazz noted a flurry of activity among both his own 'corrected' nanites he had injected, and the untampered ones.

The ones Jazz had coded were the stronger though, as the energy pouring out to them was familiar with the tiny touches of Jazz's own stylistic coding. It was feeding them, nurturing them faster. That allowed them to infect the original lot and spread the code exponentially, and the results were going green, to use human terms, fast enough even for Ratchet's impatience.

When the CMO was certain that the invasive nanites had self-destructed to the point that a directed electromagnetic pulse would finish the job, he initiated it, deactivating the camouflaging nanites in the process. Mikaela's own waste removal systems would rid her of the remains of the foreign technology. The only thing left was to carefully bring her out of the cryonic stasis and hope that the complex cellular structure of her brain had not been damaged at any point before, or during, the process. He did not care to imagine the pain and guilt Prime would suffer if something had permanently disabled their cohort's most physically vulnerable member, and was furious with himself for allowing the nanite trial to go forward in the first place.

With a vent of relief, Ratchet signaled the tank to warm the gel, and then warmed the saline drip with a directed pulse of electromagnetic waves at 2.45GHz, the same way he had always warmed up Mikaela's coffee when she'd been his apprentice.

Prime straightened, chest plates sliding closed as he did, but he did not move away, and his frame stance indicated that Ratchet had better not request it of him. Now that they had executed the plan and it was just a matter of wait and see, Mikaela deserved to have him near while she was so vulnerable.

"Gotta go have a chat with Lennox... and Bumblebee," Jazz said, musing slightly on what he had learned by his analysis. He glanced to the other end of the bay to see if the scout was still there, but he'd made good his escape as soon as Ratchet had a new patient to fret over.

"I'll contact you when she is well enough to be debriefed," Optimus said, his optics never leaving the tiny form immersed in the warming gel. "We may still need to take action at her extraction point."

"O' course, Prime. Ah got it; you get to chill and let the Jazz-man go back to work!" Jazz said with that flair that was all him, all style and pizazz with confidence to spare.

Even Ratchet smiled slightly to hear Jazz's confident ease as he debated the best way to let Mikaela recuperate from her experience. No matter how he brought her core temperature up, she would likely regain consciousness in a state of feeling excessively cold. He looked to the human sized medical cots to one side, there for the rare instances Lennox's medic had to treat casualties on site, but ruled them out; he wasn't made for that kind of sizing.

"If you're going to block up my bay, lay your aft out on a berth," Ratchet informed Prime gruffly. "Que, go find thick, soft blankets from the humans. And a pillow."

Optimus, guessing what was about to be asked of him, could not bring himself to object in any manner. Not if it meant holding and protecting their precious and far too vulnerable spitfire of an organic and allowing the heat of his plating to keep her warm. His spark was in turmoil at the close call. He would lose this particular member of his cohort far too soon as it was. Cocooning her protectively in his hands was all he had wished to do from the moment she had been brought into Medical. It would be letting her go that would be difficult.

* * *

><p>One day, Lennox was going to find the right way to talk to Optimus Prime about blind-siding him with developments from the Autobot side of things. He knew the big mech was accustomed to dealing with his own kind who managed to pretty much know most of the data with just a quick burst across the communication frequencies.<p>

He wanted the story as fast as he could get it on how Jazz was here, remembering the broken frame from that long-ago day (or so it seemed) after the battle that had gained him his new best friends in the universe.

Right now, however, he was having to side-track that as the Spec Ops officer wanted his attention.

"Sorry to have t' get right to business on ya," Jazz began. "But your men saw t' disposing of the remnants of the main 'Cons, right? Not the soldiers, but the officers?"

"We did," Lennox responded, switching into 'briefing mode'. "The protoform material was smelted down to base alloys and recycled, per Ratchet's instructions, the armor is being integrated into armored vehicles, and...everything else is being recycled in one way or another. I'm certain some of the components are being studied for reverse engineering. Prime knew that would happen. I know Ratchet removed all of the weaponry before my folks got the shells."

"So, you'd be able to personally verify that the Decepticon designated Soundwave was among the wreckages?" Jazz knew what he'd seen, but he needed to clear this up. Que coded similarly to Wheeljack, but with enough variation to be distinct. The coding tells in the nanites that had infected Mikaela had not deviated from vorns of data.

"Definitely," Will confirmed, curious about where this was leading. Then again, he thought, looking at Jazz, apparently dead mechs did have a tendency to walk again. "The three we personally dealt with were Soundwave, Shockwave, and Starscream. Those were the ones Ratchet did not want to risk any nanite or coding contamination in components that would be used on living mechs. Too likely to have left behind a nasty surprise, I guess."

"With reason, my man. With reason." Jazz would have loved to have gotten to be in on the tear down for just that reason. "Seems that Soundwave might not be as deactivated as we think, though."

Will raised his eyebrows at that. It was one thing for a mech to come back when his frame was still mostly whole, after an ancient powerful artifact had been plunged into a spark that was not fully guttered, but it was quite another for one to come back that Will had personally watched being smelted and dismantled for parts, including a very empty spark casing. Then again... there was Patronus as an example of a resurrection of a whole different sort.

"I don't see how Soundwave could have been any more dead than I last saw him," he said carefully. "What makes you think differently?"

"Just recovered one o' my operatives, and the nanites running through her systems were definitely tagged with his coding marks," Jazz told Lennox. "I've seen it too many times t' mistake it for anything else. Now, I'll give you that this might have been a long-planned for event, except... Soundwave never could have seen his defeat enough to set up a … scorched earth? ...retribution."

Will felt a cold weight settle in his gut. He knew Mikaela was back and that she had wanted to work the human angle because Will did not have anyone who could. He wanted to be wrong, but... they couldn't always be lucky, could they? Look how many men he had lost in this war already. Mikaela had volunteered, much as they had. He almost asked, worried about the young woman who had become like family over the years, but one didn't just go asking about the ID of agents or their condition.

"Could it have been something he left behind for a different purpose? Something that somehow got into the wrong hands?" Will began to think aloud. "I mean, I know resurrections are a bit in style with you guys, but there was nothing of him left when we were done. Then again...didn't that symbiot of his...Rumbage, was it? Didn't we see him again after his frame had been used for parts?"

"Ravage? Heh. Ravage can't be killed. Rumor has it his spark is exo-framed, and he uses..." Jazz broke off, then made himself continue as he needed to talk through it. "Ravage keeps spare frames waiting, with memory back-ups, but his spark sits somewhere else, with an ability to reconnect to a new frame once the current one ceases to exist. That's the rumor, anyway, because a lot of Autobots have claimed to deactivate him. Now, if Soundwave studied that, he might have learned to do it, but it's not likely. The cat's a symbiont by nature; he can feed off sparks not his own, to maintain himself. Soundwave, on the other hand, is a full-fledged mech. But he's also really, really good at remote hacks. What if what Bumblebee dealt with was just a remote?"

Will felt sick inside. It made too much sense, in the insane logic of his life since that fateful day in Qatar. Then he had to wonder again how it was that a mech he had seen deactivated, was now alive, in front of him, able to discuss this at all. In Jazz, Prime, and 'Hide's case, Will was certainly pleased at the Cybertronian tendency to refuse to stay dead, but Soundwave was a different matter altogether.

"I don't like the sound of that at all," Will admitted. "Seems we have serious problems, regardless of how the bastard managed to stay alive. Is it safe for me to assume that he has been involved with this human group that has been attacking our guys? And what if Soundwave isn't the only 'Con who has pulled a Voldemort on us and isn't really gone?"

Jazz shrugged. "One problem at a time, mah friend. We'll see about coping with the dude we know's around." He then grinned. "Just like the glitch-ridden microchip to use humans who had lost faith in us, feared or blamed us, though. He's good at spinning his lies."

Will was not inclined to feel any sympathy for the terrorist group, not after the damage they had done to Jolt. At the same time, knowing they were being manipulated by one of the very kind that they hated might take the wind out of their sails. Or it could push Soundwave to try far deadlier tactics. "We need to play this carefully with the humans involved," Will said cautiously. "What do you need from my team?"

"Surveillance in and around the area our operative was in. Careful handling of the situation without any Cybertronian tech." Jazz grimaced for Will's benefit. "That's what caused the mishap with the two that went after Bee, apparently."

Will nodded. "You got it. Just give me the location and we'll send them in...unless you'd rather coordinate it with the NEST Ops team?" Jazz had not been back long enough for Will to know quite where he fit into the command structure, but he knew that the silver mech had been Prime's trusted second on the AllSpark mission and had been in command of Autobot Special Operations. Command structure was much looser among the Autobots, and built around semi-independent cadres with the most proficient individuals in any given function taking command when appropriate, rather than a rigid military structure. NEST operated in much the same manner as it coordinated with the Autobots, even if it gave the higher ups fits.

"Ought t' get to know them, Ah think," Jazz said with a flash along his visor. "Be workin' with them to get all the 'Cons packed off to ol' Megs, right?"

"Sooner the better, Jazz. Just give me the word, whatever you need. So, while we're at it, any take on how I explain you to my higher ups? Not to be insensitive, but... your current condition doesn't exactly match our records, and my superiors tend to get in a twist about that sort of thing."

"Did Ah say Ah was Jazz?" the saboteur responded with an innocent tone. "Same frame type as that slagger, but mah designation's Meister."

"Jazz!" a voice called enthusiastically from the doorway of the hanger. "Primus! It's good to see you." Bumblebee had entered and was crossing the distance with a new bounce to his strides.

"Meister, huh?" Will said, shaking his head.

"You go 'head an' put that in your paperwork, Will. Ah'm sure we can handle any issues that might come up if your bosses get confused. Ah do look a lot like that rascal. Bless his sweet spark, even Bee gets confused," Jazz flashed his visor again and sauntered off toward Bumblebee, who made a startled electronic squawk when the silver mech suddenly tackled the scout in a clanging embrace that landed them both on the floor with a reverberating crash.

"Whatever you say, Meister," Will murmured, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as he headed out for a long date with his paperwork.

* * *

><p>Bumblebee had been excited to know Jazz was back, but that was nothing compared to actually being enveloped in Jazz's fields, held by the other mech, and tumbled into a 'puppy pile' as Carly called it whenever two or more beings were in an inelegant mess of limbs and frames. He reveled in the sensations, knowing this was key to finally beginning to heal, that having Jazz back would let them all move on.<p>

Even Sam was going to be hard-pressed to not just relax into a solid rhythm, with the way Jazz had of pulling people into place.

::Already back at work? Good, Prime needs that. Ratchet hates filling in as SIC, 'Hide's not quite fully himself enough to trust all his experience, and I'm... me.:: Inherent in that last bit was the fact that Bumblebee was still struggling to situate his humans just how he needed them.

"Can't slow me down for long!" Jazz boasted, before he decided fast-burst transmission was what he needed to go ahead and get business out of the way. He briefed Bumblebee, requested data of the final fight against Soundwave and any useful information, all in the space of seconds, just so he could concentrate on renewing his connections to the scout. Bumblebee answered quickly, and then focused on catching up, delighted to get private time with any of his cohort, but especially with the silver mech.

* * *

><p>Patronus onlined, feeling more himself than he had since the day they had brought him back online, old spark in a new frame. It wasn't just that Sideswipe had helped him explore himself, though he had, but that distracting himself in a physical, direct manner had let his processor work though the various parts of his short existence. Coming alert now, so much had slotted completely into place while he had very intently <em>not<em> been thinking about it, or anything else.

Patronus was Ironhide. Newly made over, lacking the memories, but his spark knew itself. All that remained was to make it clear to the others that he was their old friend, their cohort member.

He was through taking anything less, and they were all about to learn it!


	10. Renewal and Rage

**Title**: Patronus 10 - Renewal and Rage  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Bumblebee, Carly Spencer, Jazz, Mikaela Banes, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Sam Witwicky  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Patronus is certain of who he is, and is intent on flattening any obstacles to his cohort realizing it. But the events around him could provide him with other, less desirable opportunities to prove that Ironhide lives on.

**Notes:** In case you have missed it, Merfilly is writing a series based on DotM Novelization Canon about Megatron and the remaining Decepticons after the events of DotM. That series, _To Build a Future_, can be found at archiveofourown . org / series / 9254 (remove spaces for link).

**WARNINGS**: DotM Spoilers, non-explicit spark intimacy (of the fade-to-black variety), mild cussing, and Mikaela's mental images tend to be a little crass when she is half asleep.

* * *

><p>All of Patronus's resolution to bring the issue of his designation and his actual identity to the forefront was lost upon rejoining part of the cohort in the main command center. Bumblebee was standing by; Jazz was briefing a human team. Lennox was listening in and giving dark looks to a pair of humans in the SpecOps team who seemed to be having issues with paying attention to the giant robot.<p>

Patronus hit Bumblebee with a glyph of 'report/status/mission?' that led to him learning of Mikaela's plight and the fact that Soundwave was suspected to still exist. Patronus only barely managed to not let his engine rumble in ominous threat; his wish for a stand-up fight was not likely to happen with that one behind it all.

He filed away Jazz's new designation as well, wishing that the humans weren't so irritatingly closed in their way of thinking. From somewhere deep within himself the glyph 'Prowl' floated up, which was a distraction enough to let him stop glowering at being left out of the fight this time. With a silent curse at bureaucracy, he removed himself from Command, and went down to Medical to check on the tiny cohort member there.

He wasn't so jaded, though, to ignore just what a sight it was to see Optimus, reclined on the berth with a pile of blankets on his chestplates, and the tiny human held close in those blankets. She was in recharge, apparently, and so was Optimus, which let Patronus divert attention to checking on Ratchet instead.

::If you wake them up, I will personally reformat you into a camper trailer and let Seymour Simmons haul you away as his personal love shack,:: the CMO commed him, entering the main part of the bay from a smaller room he had appropriated as his office. ::And you might want to buff out the color transfers. Was he good to you, or do I need to go dismantle Sideswipe on top of all of the other slag I deal with?::

Patronus did not respond, but instead crossed the distance between himself and the medic, and, without hesitation, fully extended his fields to embrace his cohort mate. Ratchet allowed Patronus to pull him close, grills bumping. The black mech put a hand behind the medic's helm and pulled their forehelms together. His other hand reached knowingly under CMO's shoulder plating and began tugging and massaging the over-tight cables, using the heat and the surprisingly gentle strength of his hands to ease the tension there.

He could remember doing the same after Ratchet had nearly worked himself offline stabilizing the tiny flicker of Jazz's spark and repairing the saboteur enough for stasis with the hope that someday that same spark could be repowered. Even with limited data files, he was quite certain that once the CMO had succeeded, or failed, to pull sparks back from the brink, it was Ironhide's place to be by the medic, making sure he fuelled and relaxed enough to recharge.

::Slagging nanny-bot,:: Ratchet grumbled, but it felt good and familiar after a day that had held too much trial and prayer. ::Don't you even think about stopping,:: he ordered when Patronus's hands moved slightly away.

::Then get your aft on a berth where I can reach all of you the way you need,:: Patronus growled, voice all gravel and basso with concern. ::You're tighter than tension wire.::

Ratchet harrumphed at that, but sat so the other could come up behind him and dig into his cabling in earnest. He offlined his optics and focused his attention on the difficult task of relaxing his own overclocked systems, though he still kept a passive scan running on Mikaela. When the massage did not start immediately, he made a sound of protest only to find a cube of fuel being placed in his hands.

Ratchet made a noise that might have been another sort of protest at being nurse-maided, or it might have been gratitude. Either way, he raised the cube to his lips and sipped slowly, waiting for Patronus to resume his self-appointed task of unwinding the medic. ::Lucky for us I had a decent reason to make Prime be still, I think,:: he offered for conversation.

Patronus, following spark deep instincts as much as memory, resumed his attention to the strained cabling in Ratchet's neck and shoulders. Shoulders first, then arms, and finally the medic's sensitive hands, he recalled. ::And to think Jazz finally had him settled down for a klik,:: he responded, keeping to the safe topic that was neither himself nor the medic.

::He'll settle from this too; Mik is a tough cookie.:: Under that strong trust in the human, though, were unstated fears that something might yet be wrong with her. All of Ratchet's monitoring was indicating operational parameters were being met, but the electrical activity of the human brain still baffled him, for it varied so strongly from time to time, and he had no solid baseline to go by.

::We talk like them now, even between ourselves,:: Patronus noted, both to distract Ratchet from the worry, and also genuinely amused at the description of their tiny cohort member as the equivalent of a stale, human snack he would never process the flavor of. ::I remember arguing long and hard against getting so attached, and then turning around and bonding with a whole family group in less than a single solar cycle.::

::Not like I can call her an energon treat,:: Ratchet snickered over the link with just a hint of lewd humor in it. ::And you did, to our betterment, I believe. It may be rough...though not if 'Jack gets his slaggin' way!:: Ratchet's amusement with the inventor was flavored by a hint of exasperation. ::Optimus thinks it is good for us to adapt their languages for our own thinking, as he doesn't foresee a time when he, or the rest of us, will want to be on Cybertron as it will be under Megatron's rebuilding.:: The medic was still not certain of the wisdom in granting Megatron their world, even if it was a wreck.

Patronus knew that, as Ironhide, he would have been the first calling for Megatron's deactivation rather than a truce. His own Guardian protocols did not allow for forgiveness for what the mech, who should have been his Prime's and his home world's Lord High Protector, had done. But if there were one benefit to no longer holding a lifetime of memories, it made seeing new possibilities, if not outright forgiveness, easier to process. And he had more important concerns on this world, including the mech slowly relaxing into his hands.

::No memories of Cybertron yet,:: he responded neutrally on that topic. ::But I do know that I have everything I need to be home right here, and don't you dare give me slag for saying it,:: he added, squeezing the cabling a little too hard for emphasis.

::Ow...stop that, you slagging brute,:: Ratchet snapped, looking over his shoulder, but his optics were low-lit as he did. ::Better you don't have the images in your banks that we do, Patronus.:: He could still, dimly, remember the towers and the spires, the beauty of the cities all lit with life and energy. More often, though, he remembered the guttering fires, the molten slag, the discarded bits of frames that had once been average citizens.

Patronus could feel the weight of those memories as a dissonant note in the constant underlying resonance of the bond they shared. He began moving down the tense cabling of Ratchet's arm, who helpfully loosened his armor plating a bit for better access. Even as he eased the tense cabling, he embraced the medic more fully in his own fields and carefully opened his end of the bond wider, encouraging his anchoring partner to feel what he now knew. ::I don't know if I'll ever integrate all of it, Ratchet. But I want the memories of us back. I want you to be able to call me Ironhide again, without reservations.::

Ratchet's spark seemed to stutter in his chest. How much did he want the old Ironhide back! He knew, though, it was a fallacy. Patronus would always be different. And yet... was it so much more different than being reunited with old friends, reshaped by what they had been through? Certainly Ratchet had felt at a loss with Wheeljack on the inventor's return. 'Jack had gotten harder, more driven, obsessed with finding a cure for the slow starvation they all faced if they did not fully adapt to non-energon sources of fuels. Ratchet knew it was because of the blockade on Wheeljack's outpost, where mechs had literally starved into stasis-lock despite all he did to extend their supplies.

::Take them from me,:: Ratchet offered, cuing up the bank set aside for Ironhide, for their moments of life apart from the war, those special times that had been carefully stolen from the Pits they had existed in for so long. He opened himself to the other mech, his walls coming down, waiting for Patronus to choose if he wanted to see himself through the optics of the medic or not.

Patronus didn't hesitate. He no longer feared adding to his cohort's grief by what they might not find in him. He knew, and they would know, that his spark had not changed. He wanted the files, yes, but more than that, he wanted to renew their bond, to show Ratchet once and for all that he had not lost his anchor. The doors to Medical were locked, and, for now, all were as protected as they could be. He sat on the berth next to the medic. ::Merge with me,:: he said bluntly. ::Let me see the memories that way. You need to know, and there's no point delaying it. You'll be more at ease once you're sure, one way or the other.::

::Answer me one question.:: Ratchet shifted fully on to the berth, turning to face his companion after setting the now empty cube to one side. ::Are you aware how much you have to take, to open yourself to a medic that carries a piece of every single mech he's lost in his spark?:: Ironhide had understood, had insisted on forging tighter links than anyone else, to help Ratchet cope with the deaths. But with what little Patronus had downloaded, how could he fully understand the depth of that commitment?

Patronus placed his hands on the other's shoulders and gripped them fiercely. ::I already carry you in me, you stubborn pit-spawn. How could I want anything less than to be there for you, fully? My choices about you, about Prime, about the whole slagging cohort, are not going to be any different this time around. Optimus said, before I became the Lennox family's Guardian, that we only have today. I'm not wasting any more of that time.::

Ratchet gave him a slow smile, one that actually radiated through their co-mingled fields. Without further hesitation, he moved in as close as he could get, and realized immediately he needed to get more familiar with the other's reformatted frame. ::Slaggin' bulk of you,:: Ratchet teased him. ::Lay back. Pits if I'm going to be pinned in my own bay, and I'm not sitting upright for this!::

The black mech held back a chuckle, not wanting to risk waking the others. Instead, he lay back and pulled Ratchet with him, his fields pushing into the other's frame with a lifetime of affection that went far deeper than the scant memories he held. ::Love you, too, you slagging aft,:: he said as his chestplates unlocked and the light of a very familiar spark spilled into the bay.

* * *

><p>The remote was thoroughly destroyed. The consciousness that had controlled it was still split, part maintaining the life within the satellite-bound frame, and the other maintained by the combined processors of the world's data infrastructure that the organics called the 'Internet'. Integration was highly desired, but the processor damage done by feedback when the remote was destroyed had lingering effects in all of his transmission protocols.<p>

Without full connection to his true frame, Soundwave was limited to mostly planetary communication sources. In the absence of either a recovery team from the Decepticons or further orders, he could only continue the cause. Autobots were to be eradicated, and the humans enslaved, per all orders he had last responded to. And wasn't it a stroke of fortune, Soundwave believed, that humans were more easily united under a banner of hatred than hope?

He sent out a new message, a call to arms for his followers, as time was growing short with the Chicago recovery nearing an end. He had to strike soon, or the Autobots would be hidden once again. Then he sent a signal to a drone whose mission had been in place but had never been activated upon the failure of the conquest of Earth. Its function would be equally suited to his purposes now. The nanite infused alcohol from Dylan's winery was suitable to dispose of his human operatives, should they be captured. But he needed a different tool to enslave the fleshlings and force them to use their swarming insect mass to take out any remaining Autobot traitors.

* * *

><p>A small group of humans as diverse as the city itself remained behind after the support group had adjourned for the evening, most of them holding paper cups of stale coffee, intent on a long, late night of planning.<p>

They first discussed the newcomers who had come to the group that evening. None of them had what it took to be one of them. Not like the red haired woman whom they had invited to stay behind the night before. That one had promise, and enough fire in her to actually want to do something about the monsters who had brought down their city and could kill a person without even trying. They had watched her carefully for the week she'd been attending the nightly meetings before inviting her to stay. Her background information had checked out. One of their number who worked in a hospital had verified that a woman with her name and description had been treated for her injuries following the invasion, and the names she had shared of those she'd lost had checked out in the public records of the deceased as well. Nothing suspicious had come up the evenings they'd had her followed back to the refugee center where she was staying.

Still, they had been careful. They never told any one person too much. But they had been encouraged when she told them she had an actual contact on the aliens' base, and could potentially use it to their benefit. One of their priorities was finding out the status of the two missing members after their last failed attack on the robots. They were presumed dead, likely killed by one of the robots as soon as the attack went wrong. That was the dark hope. But if they had been captured, things could be much worse. Either way, they needed to take action, and soon, before they were discovered.

They had ended the previous evening with a glass of wine from the case their funding agent had sent them, toasting to a new partnership with promises to talk more the following evening. She had left rather abruptly, claiming to be ill, creating suspicion, but their watchers at the exits had not seen anyone of her description pass by. Even more suspicion arose when she had not shown up the following night. Fortunately, they had told her very little, but the risk that they had been compromised, and the fact that the majority of the robots were slated to wrap up their operations in the city meant they needed to take action quickly, even if it cost them their own lives. The latest message from their leader had been stirring and true. Preventing any other human casualties to the aliens' war would be worth their lives. They were Earth's defenders. Their deaths, to destroy the soulless abominations, would honor of the memories of those they had lost.

* * *

><p>Later, much later, after the group finally broke off their planning to return wearily to their beds, a custodian entered and collected the trash bag of paper cups and empty water bottles. Spying the case of wine, he slipped a bottle into his cart as well. When he finished his shift, he drove to neighborhood on the South Side of the city. He dumped the bag of trash and recycling in a window well in a dark alley, along with the bottle of wine. Shortly after, a yellow Camaro drove up. A young man exited the car, watched closely by the beautiful young woman in the passenger seat. Careful not to touch any of refuse, he emptied the contents of a silver vial on it. The young man stepped away, and after a few moments, the car's headlights flickered. At that signal, the young man proceeded to pick up the trash bag and the bottle and place them in the car's trunk.<p>

* * *

><p>::Jazz, we've got a problem,:: Bumblebee commed his superior as he made his way to the next rendezvous point with their human agents. ::That group that Mikki found has infected a whole lot of humans with a different version of Soundwave's pit-spawns. The ones in the wine were coded the same as those in our gal, but the ones in the water bottles scanned differently.:: ::Any of 'em intact?:: Jazz responded.<p>

::Negative. Your counter ones stripped the shielding off the new ones as well. Disabled all of them with an EMP. Couldn't risk Sam and Carly getting infected.::

::Good work, Bee. Bring 'em in and Ah'll check out what's left of 'em.::

* * *

><p>There was no way in hell she wanted to wake up. Not with how good she felt in that comfortable zone floating between awake and asleep. And certainly not when she remembered feeling colder than Megatron's junk buried in the arctic...saving that he did not have any junk that she knew of. But if he did, and it had gotten so cold that it had fallen off? She had been colder than that.<p>

And then there had been the pain...better to think about Megatron's mythical mechhood in deep freeze than how her body had felt like it was tearing itself apart from the inside. She needed to stay with the now and the here, where she was warm and entirely too comfortable with the familiar purr and warmth of advanced alien systems and the hum of a spark that she could feel nearby. But there was something she needed to tell someone. Something that was too important to wait, so she dragged her consciousness out of the fluffy, warm blanket it was in and forced herself to open her eyes.

Medical? Why the hell was she in Ratchet's bay? And why was Optimus cocooning her so completely in his hands that she didn't have a chance of moving anything but her head, which was the only thing peaking out of blankets inside that massive, metal grip. She turned her neck and saw Patronus in recharge on his back with Ratchet sprawled out on him, somehow fitting their complicated, angular frames together in some perfect mech origami.

A flash of optics told her that Ratchet was actually awake, and then he was getting to his pedes to come check on her.

"You don't have to get up, doc. You two looked so cute like that."

"I beg to differ," Ratchet responded, too relieved to sound snarky despite his words. "There is absolutely nothing 'cute' about either one of us, and I do need to get up and check on the completely glitched member of my cohort who keeps insisting on putting her far too fragile body at risk for injuries I can't repair."

Their voices stirred Optimus, and his systems hummed louder as they came online.

"Mikaela," he said even as his optics lit and focused intently on her. "Are you well?"

"Well I would be, but there is this gigantic lug nut who is holding me so tight I can't move and I'm afraid my limbs might have atrophied." Mikaela flashed him a smile so he'd know she was not only joking, but also, more importantly, feeling fine. "What the hell happened?"

The giant 'lug nut' in question flexed his digits just slightly, not enough to hurt her, but applying gentle pressure in a motion that reassured him, quite illogically, that she was honestly within his grasp. "You were recklessly endangered because I did not have more logic in assigning your duties."

Patronus, coming alert on the other berth, heard those words, and made a very rude noise in Cybertronian, the equivalent of a Bronx cheer. "Listen to his slagging self! Prime, get over it; you don't hold every single on of our fates in your hands. Mikaela's upgraded enough to make her own choices on service!"

"Hey," Mikaela said more gently, ignoring Patronus for the moment, though not without noting that she could no longer distinguish his tone from Ironhide's. She arched her neck to look up at the optics of the mech holding her. "My choice, remember? Freedom, sentient beings, the Autobot way, and all that stuff?" She squirmed a little as the distinctive tingle of a deep-level scan ran through her. "Seriously, what happened. Was I compromised?"

"In an all too dangerous manner, yes," Ratchet answered, feeling tremendously relieved by both the external data indicating Mikaela's obviously functioning processors, as well as the results of the internal scan. The residual cellular damage was healing at an accelerated rate. He had to wonder about the effects of her exposure to Prime's unique spark and the energies of the Matrix.

"You were infected with a self-replicating nanite virus," Ratchet continued. "The same one that infected the humans who ambushed Bumblebee. They were trying to take you apart at the cellular level. Your camouflaging nanites protected you long enough for Mudflap and Skids to get you here so we could deactivate them, but the defenders taxed your cellular structure so much that they were endangering you as well. And so I'm afraid I concur with Prime, though not with his slagging hyperactive guilt complex. We never should have allowed you to test the damn things."

"Well...it sounds like if I hadn't, the other ones would have killed me before I got back," Mikaela said breezily, though she knew she couldn't hide the spike in her vitals and the sudden flash of fear at just how close it had been. "Must have been in the wine...I remember having a drink, and then...I just knew I had to get the hell outta Dodge."

There was a short silence that told her that all three mechs in the room were searching the internet to reference her colloquialism. She opted not to mention the pain she had felt when fleeing from the room where the group had met. Optimus did not need anything else to flagellate himself over. "Optimus...these people. There's someone on the outside pulling their strings. They shared a few of their organizer's messages. They didn't tell me much more, but enough to know that they are extremely well funded, have access to way better technology than a group like that should have. They're total amateurs. Just normal people who lost friends and loved ones, and they're getting manipulated. They need help."

"They're not the only ones who do, an' Ah'm afraid Ah know who's pullin' their strings," Jazz said, coming out of Ratchet's work room where he had been hard at work reconstructing the function and coding of the second type of viral nanites Bumblebee and his other agents had detected. "Soundwave ain't gone. Not sure he's fully back, 'cause the way he's usin' the humans lacks some of his normal finesse, but he ain't gone. Those nanites in Mikki had his codin' marks all over 'em, an' this new set is infectin' the workers, folks in the refugee centers, and even NEST as we speak. They self replicate, are spread by fluids, and go straight t' the nervous system."

Jazz held up a clawed hand to stop them from asking any questions until he was done. Now that he knew what they were dealing with, time was critical. "Whoever can signal them can cause 'em a scrap load of pain, or even stop their pump for good, and the signal's keyed t' be part of Internet, over cellular, wireless, an' satellite transmissions...so it's pretty much anywhere Soundwave's fragged up program is, which is everywhere. A slaggin' good way to force obedience on your slaves, if ya know what Ah mean. An' the worst part is that every bottle of water we've located from the shipment that was distributed yesterday is full of 'em. One signal, and that Pit spawn can torture...or kill...every human who's had a drink of the stuff or had fluid contact with someone who has, includin', by now, a good number of the humans on this base. And...likely every other human being in this region who's had water from that same bottling plant."

Patronus stood, his engine roaring and systems fueled with rage. All he could process was Sarah, Will, and worst of all, Annabelle, at the mercy of someone who could torture or murder them with a single signal. He could not even put himself between them and the danger; if they'd already been infected, the danger was inside of their own fragile systems.

But it was nothing compared to the rage Mikaela swore she could physically feel rush through Optimus like a wild storm coming from his spark. He swiftly handed her off to Ratchet before his hands clenched tight and he growled out a single word in the darkest tone she'd ever heard from him. "Megatron!"


	11. Tension Rising

**Title**: Patronus 11 - Tension Rising  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Annabelle Lennox, Jazz, Megatron, Optimus Prime, Sarah Lennox, Sideswipe, Soundwave various human OCs  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Optimus must confront his brother on the evidence of the broken truce, while the humans in Soundwave's shadow conspiracy prepare for confrontations of their own.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Merfilly is writing a series about Megatron that parallels the events in Patronus. It's latest chapter is directly connected with this one. "To Build a Future" can be found here (archiveofourown . org / series / 9254). Just a reminder: we are mixing DotM novelization with movie canon. The major difference, of course, is that in the novel, Optimus is merciful and forms a truce with Megatron at the end of the novel, and Megatron plans to lead the 'Cons back to a still existing Cybertron to rebuild. I know I, for one, was in major shock at how differently the movie ended. An additional (long) note about cohort relationships will be found at the end of this chapter.

**WARNINGS**: Threatened violence against a child.

* * *

><p>Prime excused himself from Medical with no more ado, his strides long and angry as he knew he was going to have to confront his lying, manipulative, power-mad brother again. He needed space away from the humans, away from his own, though, to open that bond linking him to Megatron. It had always been there, though in the war it had been barely a sub-level link, no more than a whisper at the best of times. Each of them, resenting the connection, had done all they could to shunt it away, guard against it, and ignore its existence.<p>

In the aftermath of Chicago, though, they had agreed that the link binding them would serve as clear faith of living up to the ceasefire agreement they had hammered out, terms that had required Megatron to withdraw all claims to Earth in exchange for his rights to renew Cybertron to the best of his ability. Optimus Prime had been torn even then, for he had, as Megatron demanded of him so insistently, felt the pull of their homeworld. However, Optimus Prime knew he could not abandon their responsibilities to Earth, and did not trust Megatron's avarice where the planet and its people were concerned.

He had also thought it interesting to wonder just how dedicated war-caste mecha were going to turn themselves into the kind of workers Cybertron needed to be healed.

All such thoughts were lost now, in the blaze of fury at his brother's new betrayal. He barely cleared the compound before he was in vehicular mode, rolling as quickly as he dared beyond the city in search of solitude. The entire time, his anger simmered, bubbling into the kind of strength it would take to cross the span of distance he felt between himself and Megatron.

When Prime could finally consider himself alone, parked in the crossroads of a pair of country lanes far to the southwest of the city, he looked skyward, his optics filtering out the affects of Earth's sun and atmosphere. He tracked the stars' paths, letting his gaze focus in the direction of far distant Titan, where Megatron had withdrawn his mechs and battered old ship for repurposing. From there they were supposed to begin the long voyage to Cybertron, and yet now, Prime could not help but feel as if he had foolishly allowed optimism to overcome good sense in allowing his brother to live.

~**MEGATRON!**

All of his indignation, pain, and anger lanced out to make the connection to his spark's brother. He could feel as Megatron allowed the connection, buffering it, adding his own will to it, with … surprise?

~Optimus, you sound...perturbed.~ The emotions along the bond indicated that Megatron was of a mind to find what had invoked Optimus's state of being and rend it pede to helm. That amount of emotion was hard to fake in the kind of link they shared, but it was Megatron, a fact Optimus could never lose his wariness around.

~Soundwave has released two separate nanite viruses on the human population, both of which are deadly, and is inciting human groups to attack my mechs!~ Optimus pressed the knowledge of what he knew, what he was certain of, so that no denial of the facts were possible. His righteous anger fueled the strength of the communication across the solar system.

~Soundwave?~ The name resonated with the distinct impression of permanent deactivation from Megatron. ~That mech was offlined by your scout, from all I could discover after the fact. I have already selected a new hatchling and given it over to the care of Ravage for purposes of training a new communicator.~ Only dry fact flavored those words, as if the loss of a valued lieutenant held no more place in his existence. ~If you are contending with Soundwave, dear brother, it is not under my current operational parameters for my mechs, nor has he been in communication with me since his supposed destruction by an inferior mech.~

Optimus ignored the slight against Bumblebee, whom he would never consider an inferior mech to anyone. He pushed hard, but could sense no deception from his brother, though possibly obfuscation and no small amount of smugness regarding the hatchling. But it did not seem to be directed toward the situation at hand. For a brief moment he regretted that he had stormed away prior to asking more questions of Jazz. He briefly backed away from the link and commed his lieutenant for addition details, receiving a quick, factual data burst in response that did nothing to distract him from the resonance he currently needed to focus on. ~We believe the mech whom Bumblebee deactivated was a remote hack, and have hard evidence of Soundwave's continued operation using the humans' data network.~

~Interesting.~ There was a long pause as Megatron weighed his options. Soundwave had long experience, but would he fit in the new world order Megatron had conceived of once he had fully purged both the influence of the Fallen, and Sentinel's poisonous words? ~Do what you will with him. I scarcely have the resources to come after a failure of a mech.~

Optimus felt a new anger rising in his spark at his brother's blatant dismissal of yet another life, when so few of their kind remained. ~You have a chance to regain one of your must loyal supporters, and you will simply discard him to be deactivated by my mechs once again? You would doom another spark to be extinguished when a single order from you would stay his actions? I remind you that we came to this truce in the interests of the survival of our kind!~

~Brother,~Megatron purred across the link. ~Are you admitting you cannot defuse the actions of one lowly Decepticon with your gilded words?~ There was an amusement in those words, rippling with … for Megatron... gentle mockery at his brother's wish to be a peaceful mech despite being among the deadliest of their kind.

Optimus had no patience for it. ~We both know it is your words that will guide his actions from here. He is your responsibility. You wish him deactivated, then you take his spark. Or shall I assume he continues to act in accordance with your wishes?~

The link nearly frayed with a burst of temper from the other end of it, before solidifying as Megatron got a leash on his destructive emotions. ~Optimus, he likely is. As you pointed out, he is loyal to a fault. And as he has not contacted me, he will be following the last given directives.~ The leader of the Decepticons was trying to determine his best tactical approach at this point, a fact he let Optimus see. If he left the _Nemesis_, would he return to a fresh round of contests for the leadership? Would he be seen as stronger for bracing the Autobots on their chosen turf, or weaker, for giving way to his brother, again? Could he trust Thundercracker, or more, would Soundwave? ~You are a slagging pincer in my plates, Optimus.~

Optimus felt his own anger cool at the clear sense of the challenges his brother currently faced. Not enough to let him off the hook, however. ~Send one of his remaining symbionts with Thundercracker. Do not force me to take his spark, brother. Not when his talents could be turned to the rebuilding of our world rather than the destruction of this one. He is loyal to you.~

Megatron considered, bristling slightly at Optimus's suggestions. He was, after all, free to do anything he chose to do for himself! ~It will be handled. Contain him until then, brother.~ The link between them was very abruptly cut off, as Megatron launched himself into action aboard his ship.

Optimus felt his systems settle, but remained where he was for a time. He needed the solitude, as much as he needed the comfort and renewal of his cohort. But, as so often had seemed to plague his existence, even for one as long lived as himself, there was no time. Soundwave would be well aware of the compromise of his human agents and was likely taking preemptive and decisive action that could cost many their lives. He opened his comm link to Jazz.

::Megatron has agreed to handle Soundwave, but we must prevent him from taking any further action until then. What do you suggest?::

Jazz was not pleased that Optimus had been in contact with that glitch-ridden slag-heap of a nihilistic mech. However, he was also an expert at divorcing his opinion from his mission. :: I can distract him. He knows I was deactivated, by all intelligence he would have been able to find. He's never been able to ignore me baiting him.::

::Do it, and we need to find a way to swiftly deactivate the nanites and prevent their further spread. We cannot risk him activating them. Likewise, we must convince the humans who have been working with him that they have been manipulated, before they take action on their own. I fear we must again rely on our human allies for that task, as our sparks will trigger the nanites in his human agents' systems. I will also contact the human political leaders to see if it is feasible to temporarily suspend their Internet.::

::Can tell ya, boss-bot, that ain't gonna fly. Not after the protests in other parts of the world where the Internet was the only voice of truth or info,:: Jazz sent back. ::But Ah'll get right on working with Lennox's Spec Ops team and setting up ways to contain those that think we're the problem, while poking at Soundwave just where he can't ignore me,:: Jazz promised.

::I understand, Jazz. I am already on my way. How did I function without you on the ground?::

::Still figurin' that one out, boss-bot,:: Jazz replied cheekily as he got things in line on his end.

* * *

><p>Sarah felt her bracelet buzz at the same time that her cell phone, actually a Cybertronian communications device, began to ring. It wasn't as though they had a bunker to race to, but she felt her guts twist in worry even as she answered. Were the Decepticons back? Was the base under attack?<p>

"Sarah Lennox," the voice on the other end was far more Ironhide than Patronus, and was all business. It made her heart skip a beat. "You must collect Annabelle from her classroom and report to Medical immediately to receive antiviral nanites. Do not, under any circumstance, drink any bottled water. Have you done so in the last 48 hours?"

"What? What is going on, Hide? Is Annabelle in danger? And yes...I have a bottle of water in my hand right now... I mean, I know the plastic is bad but the tap water here tastes horrible and... 'Hide Annabelle had a bottle in her lunch today!" Sarah felt herself slipping into panic.

She heard what she knew was a Cybertronian curse, but the voice that responded to her was calm, knowing just how to keep her centered. "Don't panic, Sarah. There has been a viral nanite released into the latest water shipment. It is currently dormant, not active. We have the proper antiviral to deactivate it permanently before it can cause you and Annabelle any harm, and NEST is preparing to distribute it broadly. I must assist with another mission, but I will better be able to focus on my duties should I know that you and Annabelle have already received the antiviral and are in Medical. That structure is more reinforced than any of the others on our base. I would take you to retrieve Annabelle myself, but with this group targeting mechs, you are safer in public without me." Sarah knew the tone well enough to know how much it pained Ironhide to say it.

She briefly realized that she was now mentally calling their Guardian, Ironhide, rather than Patronus, but did not allow herself to think much on it. "I'll get her right away, Patronus. I'm volunteering just up the road. We should be at Medical in less than thirty minutes. Go do what you need to do."

"Thank you, Sarah."

* * *

><p>n3vrfrG3t49384: Things have tightened up. We can't get close to their base, and most aren't leaving it. We are waiting for the large one to return, but they won't make the same mistake twice.<p>

SUp3rI0R84292: Target civilian family members of their human collaborators.

n3vrfrG3t49384: Why would they care about humans?

SUp3rI0R84292: Their collaborators are valuable assets to them. Obtain the spouse or child of the highest placed human collaborator, and they will come to you. Detonate devices when the robots are in range.

n3vrfrG3t49384: I don't like targeting a kid, but we do have agents in that school.

SUp3rI0R84292: One life worth the others you will save.

SUp3rI0R84292: *connection interrupted...buffering...connection terminated*

* * *

><p>Annabelle loved being big enough to be with the other kids, and getting to play, but it was never as good as being with Ironhide, or her daddy. When she saw her mom coming toward her, face set in the pretty look that also meant 'tough mommy', she didn't get scared so much as excited, because it meant she would be going to Ironhide or Daddy soon.<p>

Then two men who worked at the school got between her and her mom, and Annabelle felt a little afraid. She ducked away from the first grab for her, just like she'd seen Sideswipe do when Ironhide tried to grab his shoulders. Her mommy was yelling then, and Annabelle knew she needed to not let the men touch her. It was strange to be worried about grown-ups and not bad robots, but she started running for all her little legs were worth as her mommy yelled at the men, and made a Big Scene.

It seemed to work, because some other grown ups were looking her way. She saw Ms. Stanly, who helped in her class, and began to run toward her as fast as she could while her mom continued to scream at the men who had tried to grab her. The other playground supervisor was coming, too.

"What's the matter, Annabelle," Ms. Stanly asked her as she ran up.

"Those men tried to grab me!" she said, panting.

"Mr. Ebinger and Mr. Garcia? Maybe they were just trying to keep you from running off the playground, sweetie. Your mom needs to come check you out of the office first. Those are the rules to keep you safe."

Annabelle turned toward her mom, who was now talking with both men loudly, shaking off one when he grabbed at her elbow. Her mom's hands and arms were moving like they did only when she was really, really mad (usually with her dad, but occasionally at Ironhide or another mech).

"Why don't you come inside with me, Annabelle, while the rest of the grown-ups get this sorted out," the woman said gently, her forehead furrowed.

Suddenly her mommy looked straight at her. "Annabelle, code 4!" she said in a voice that carried over the distance.

Annabelle crossed her arms. She knew her codes. Ironhide had done too many drills with her and her family for her not to know exactly what that meant. "Not going anywhere," she said, stomping her foot for emphasis. Not without her mom, dad, or one of the Autobots, that was.

"We need you and your daughter to come with us," one of the men was saying to her mom as the other not-very-gently grabbed her arm again and began leading her toward the spot Annabelle was now glued to. "It is for your own safety."

"I don't care what you say or do, I'm not going anywhere with you or anyone else not personally vouched for by my husband," Sarah said in a very calm voice. The calm in her tone belied her planning, though. She had witnesses, and hoped these men weren't willing to push an all out scene of abduction, though she could not be sure. She rubbed at her wrist, knowing her watch was sending back that her vital signs were agitated, and also aware that Patronus would have been monitoring after his communication with her. At least, that was her hope as she suddenly put speed and agility to use, shaking off the one man and dodging around the other swiftly to break for her child. She would go inside with her little girl, and hope that someone was on the way to help get her out of the hostile situation.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw both men move as though to pursue, but other adults, having heard the shouting, had come outside and were making their way toward the scene, whether to stop Sarah or confront the men, she wasn't sure. She didn't take the time to find out. Even as Sarah grabbed Annabelle, she heard the loud blast of a horn from the road outside of the playground fence and the roar of familiar high-powered engine. It was not the engine she had been expecting, but then again, as soon as there had been any sign of trouble, Ironhide would have signaled the closest Autobot. Sarah ignored the startled shouts and screams as Sideswipe transformed, reaching over the fence to grab both of them even as she ran toward him.

Annabelle squealed with excitement as that careful, yet deadly hand closed around her and her mommy. Riding in Sideswipe always meant going very fast; the silver mech had no other speed. She could feel his voice as he spoke to those watching.

"The Lennox family is required for security reasons," Sideswipe said, only because Patronus was instructing him to make an excuse to the vulnerable humans, his optics getting a solid look at the two failed abductors. That information was sent straight to the Spec Ops section's computers for facial recognition. Known associates would be traced, and hopefully Jazz could start piecing together just who was in the shadow conspiracy Soundwave had organized. A NEST team, who would not trigger the dissolving nanites if the men were infected, had already been deployed to bring the two in. He had scanned Sarah and Annabelle before picking them up. Ironhide's charges had the more widespread nanite infection, but that was still dormant without a signal from Soundwave.

Annabelle could not hear what the men were saying to the other adults, but she could tell they were yelling, making rude and wild gestures toward Sideswipe. The silver warrior, rather than immediately placing them on the ground so he could transform, skated away from the school so fast she felt her stomach lurch like she was on a roller coaster. She felt tingles go up and down her back and knew he was actively scanning the area. Finally, out of sight from the school, he let them down from his protective grip, transformed, and opened his passenger door. Her mommy got in, and pulled Annabelle onto her lap. Sideswipe did not like people in his driver's seat.

"Thank you, Sideswipe," Sarah said, holding Annabelle tight to her chest. "I knew I couldn't outrun them with Annabelle, and needed to stay near witnesses, so I am glad you came."

"Of course he came. Ironhide'd stomp his aft if he didn't!" Annabelle piped up, letting her mommy cuddle, even if she'd rather be looking out the window at the city zooming by. Sometimes grown-ups had to be reassured.

"If he could stomp his own aft for failing to foresee this particular risk and accompany you, he would," Sideswipe's voice reverberated around them. "I was already the closest, and Jazz picked up a suspicious conversation on the Internet after Patronus contacted you. Patronus was already on his way to another part of the city with Will, or he might have stood a chance of catching up."

Annabelle knew Ironhide would have beaten him, but did not say so. Sideswipe was like the school bully; he was always best and pouted if someone proved him wrong.

"Sounds like it's under control, as best we can get it for now," Sarah said. "So...let's just go to base."

"Already there," Sideswipe said smugly as he roared into the secure area.

* * *

><p>The 2010 Ford Taurus was wired with enough high temperature explosives to take out whatever machine it hit, and the driver had been strapped into the seat for good measure. She was racing along the same road that the machine disguised as the Peterbilt was expected to return on, and planned to hit it head on. She had not received orders, and all contact with their organizer had suddenly terminated. The abduction of the collaborator's wife and child had been unsuccessful, and they were running out of options. Several members of her team were already in the machine lovers' custody. If she didn't take action now, all would be lost.<p>

The few machines in the city were surrounding by human teams who were distributing some sort of nanotech drug, likely to control the minds of those who took it. It was just like them to manipulate people into taking the drug out of fear of another fictional virus. She had instructed the rest of her agents to attempt to disrupt the distribution of the drug by any means possible, and turned her attention to the one mech known to be traveling alone. The initial plan had been to blow up those who attempted to rescue the child and wife of the head-collaborator, but now, her explosive-filled vehicle was heading out of town after a signal had come in from an agent living along Hwy 34 that the garishly painted Peterbilt had passed through the town of Dover to the southwest of the city.

She hadn't set out to be a martyr. But, perhaps her fate had been sealed from the moment she'd watched with her own eyes as one of the machines vaporize her business partner and closest friend as they had tried to flee that horrible day. What was worse was seeing the expression on its face, knowing it had enjoyed what it had done, repeating the process with others whose terrified faces haunted her dreams. Some had been crushed, others vaporized, others torn apart, all around her, as they ran. She still did not understand why she had survived. Why it had looked right at her, and passed her by, as though wanting to leave someone behind to admire the thoroughness, and ease, of its handiwork. It had pointed the weapon, larger than her own body, right at her, then said something in its horrible language before turning its attention elsewhere and bounding away. Everyone around her had been dead. She now knew that she had been spared in order to take vengeance the only way she could.

Sure, these others were supposedly helping. But they were all the same kind of machines, and all had the same ultimate goal. These "Autobots" were simply more conniving and manipulative in the execution of their plans. She'd seen the intelligence to back up their organizer's claims. Different tactics, but the same final result: humanity enslaved, their world raped of resources, and finally, their own sun harvested for its energy.

No, she had never set out to be a martyr, but she had already died that day in everything but fact. At least she could take out the most powerful of the things that had invaded her planet before she joined those already gone.

Without the resources of the satellite belonging to the billionaire who was supporting and leading them from behind the scenes, she was not aware of the black truck trailing her just out of her visual range, nor of the steady communication happening between that truck, its occupant, and the Peterbilt approaching from the other direction.

* * *

><p><em>Additional Notes: Femme's Meta on Cohorts<em>

_ Wait, who is bonded to who? What is a cohort, anyhow? Are Ratchet and Ironhide sparkmates? What is Ironhide's relationship with Optimus? And how does Jazz fit in? And what is going on between Optimus and Mikaela? If Ironhide is bonded to Ratchet, why did he interface with Sideswipe?_

We've had enough questions about the relationships we've suggested in this story that I decided to write up my meta regarding cohort relationships. I would prefer to explain it in the context of the story itself, but with only one chapter and an epilogue to go, it is unlikely to happen within the storyline. Merfilly and I have developed these ideas through conversation, and I've been developing them in my ongoing story, Ozone: The Xenophilia Edition, though there are some minor differences between cohorts in that storyline and this one. I have been influenced by Dwimordene's ideas about cohorts she developed in her story, Bridges, as well as some of the ideas found in Botosphere's "The Tie that Binds", though take things in a different direction because the mech-femme dichotomy is not a strong one for me (I see Femmes as more of a culture, akin to Seekers, than any sort of "gender", and on prewar Cybertron, Femmes would have only been in cohorts with other Femmes, Seekers with other Seekers, etc.).

We are not using common fanon understandings of sparkmates or sparkbonded mecha in the Patronus storyverse. In this story, the basic social organizing principle of pre-war Cybertronians, (which continues to be the primary organizing principle for Autobots) are bonded cohorts. Cohorts are groups who have no direct analog in human culture - they are somewhat like coworkers, a team sharing a common purpose, but have some analogies to family (in which elder members are like creators, mentors and siblings to the younger). They are siblings, creators, family, friends, lovers and colleagues all wrapped up into one. Cohorts share a bond that strengthens and is healing to each member's spark when it is renewed through spark merging. In the absence of the Allspark to produce new energon, merging with one's cohort also renews a mech's existing energon, which suffers impurities due to the use of lesser fuels. This is possible because sparks are still connected to the same energy and dimensional reality in which the Allspark exists (the Cube is merely a form the Allspark took in our dimension). Cohort bonds can be renewed with non-adult mechs via a different process than sparkmerging, which would be dangerous for an underdeveloped spark and a personality matrix which is not yet fully developed.

In the Golden Age, mecha always onlined into a particular cohort, and it was near impossible to change one's cohort and the function one had within a cohort. Cohorts either built or had new members commissioned, often donating potions of their own code to the protoforms before the new mech was sparked by the Allspark. Optimus is an orphan, having either left his original cohort or been somehow forcibly separated from it. Sentinel recognized Optimus's spark as a Prime candidate, and he was taken into Sentinel's personal cohort (which included Megatron), as an older youngling or younger mechling. Ironhide was initially Optimus's bodyguard, and then became his bonded Guardian when it was clear that as the future Lord High Protector, Megatron did not intend on completing his guardian bond with Optimus (though as a member of Sentinel's cohort, they did share a very strained and very weak cohort bond).

Some, but not all cohorts have a hub, a single mech who ties the rest together. Such is the case in Prime's cohort. I may explore the difference between hubbed cohorts and non-hubbed cohorts in a separate one shot. An example of a non-hubbed cohort would be Wheeljack's, which consists of himself, Perceptor, other scientists who have now been lost, and during the war added Hoist and Grapple when they rejected their cohort bond with the rest of the Constructicons. Que is the creation of that cohort, one of the final mechs sparked by the Allspark. He was built by Wheeljack and modeled on his own frame (our Que does not resemble Que in the movie).

The war decimated most existing cohorts, either through violence or by divisions within the cohort along factional lines. For the sake of the health of their sparks and the stability of their psyches, new cohorts were formed. Even within Decepticon culture, which frowned on the weaknesses of cohort bonds, shadow, secretive cohorts were still formed by some. Likewise, some 'Cons found different methods to counteract the damage to their sparks caused by a lack of cohort, while others slipped into greater degrees of instability due to the absence of those bonds and the renewing spark merges.

Now, nearly all cohorts are the equivalent of a family-of-choice. Within various cohorts, it is not uncommon for certain mecha to act as anchoring partners to one another, and share a deeper level of intimacy than they do with the entire cohort. Anchoring trines or quads are common as well. Jazz and Optimus Prime are anchoring partners. Ironhide and Ratchet, likewise, are anchors. It is my assumption that Bumblebee was created or commissioned by one or more of the mecha in Prime's cohort. With his being both SpecOps and a Guardian at core, it would not surprise me if both Jazz and Ironhide had a great deal of input into his coding.

A mech's relationship with a creator or creators is _not_ analogous to that of a parent to a child. Nor are the various stages of development in a mech analogous to human childhood. Sometimes a creator acts as mentor to a sparkling, while other times a different mech is chosen for that role. There would be no stigma against mecha interfacing with the rest of the members of their cohort once their sparks and personality matrixes are fully developed. Optimus, once he was aware that the cohort bond still existed with Patronus, chose a mech outside of their cohort to mentor him, knowing that the existing bonds could easily cause damaging conflict within the emerging personality matrix of the new mech if he were vastly different from Ironhide, which was possible.

Sparkmerging normally takes place within a cohort, though it would not be frowned upon for mecha separated from their cohorts to form a new temporary or permanent bond with others. Other types of interfacing between consenting mecha who are not a part of the same cohort is considered a completely normal recreational activity and does not have the same social stigmas attached to it as dominant views of human sexuality in the Western culture. Also, it should be noted that spark intimacy has no real human equivalent. When the Lennox family, including Annabelle, touched Ironhide's spark in order for him to form a Guardian bond with them, the contact was intimate, but not sexual. Spark intimacy can be highly sensual, but in other cases is an intimate form of contact that is purely emotional, or even spiritual in nature.

The more I consider the matter, I have come to think of Guardian bonds as a particular subtype of cohort bond rather than a different kind of bond altogether. It has a particular set of long, historical traditions around it, and, on Cybertron, was often limited in duration until the charge involved did not have as strong a need of a protector. Guardians might then become a part of their former charge's cohort, of might go on to form a Guardian bond with another who needed their particular type of protection and mentoring, or both. Because Ironhide's core function is that of Guardian, any cohort bond he forms will have elements of guardianship, but he also forms particular Guardian bonds beyond his cohort as his spark is moved to do so. Ironhide was Optimus Prime's Guardian before they were considered cohort mates.

For reasons that are not developed in this particular story, Optimus Prime considers both Sam and Mikaela to be a part of his personal cohort (which consists of Ratchet, Ironhide, Jazz and Bumblebee, and may include others not yet on Earth), and their "patterns" and "code" (organic energy resonance and DNA) have been imprinted on his spark and the sparks of his cohort. I am not certain how and when that imprinting took place in this storyverse, but if you pick up that Sam's bond with the cohort has a level of strain and conflict to it, you would not be wrong. It is part of Mefilly's and my overall headcanon for his character that does not get much development in this particular story. Bumblebee is also bonded to Sam as Guardian, finally allowing Bumblebee to serve his core function.

I hope this helps clear up some of the questions and raises new ones. I love discussing this stuff. One more chapter and the epilogue to go, folks, along with a few "outtakes". Thanks for being such wonderful readers and reviewers!


	12. New Avenues

**Title**: Patronus 12 - New Avenues  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Annabelle Lennox, Jazz, Josie Beller, Megatron, Optimus Prime, Sarah Lennox, Soundwave, Will Lennox  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Old bots can learn new tricks.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: In case you wondered, Josie Beller, aka Circuit Breaker, is a canon human from TF Marvel Comics continuity.

**WARNINGS**: Non-explicit interfacing (spark, PnP) of the fade to black variety.

* * *

><p>Jazz rocked back from his knees onto his ankles, settling in with his legs folded beneath him. It had been a very long time since he went processor to processor with Soundwave. Adding to the challenge was that Jazz had not learned of the human data network until arriving in answer to Bumblebee's beacon, back when the AllSpark had been found. Soundwave had apparently been involved in its very conception, or at least its evolution from the late part of the prior century onwards.<p>

"Ah'm ready for ya, though," he murmured out loud, before a data cable snaked out of his left hand, finding the port in the console. "Let's dance, then!" Jazz's consciousness streamed into the secure node, taking with it the various countermeasures and attack programs he had crafted, based solely on the coding Soundwave used to listen to the Internet.

* * *

><p>Soundwave jerked as he felt a tenth of his support nodes suddenly removed from his access. Such a feat was impossible according to the data he had at his disposal. Then an attack on one of the now isolated nodes revealed to him the identity of his crafty nemesis.<p>

High above the Earth, Soundwave's primary frame smiled in response to the anticipation of the battle ahead. With such an opponent, Soundwave pulled more of himself back into the viral program he had crafted to survive in the human data network, leaving his frame, yet again, mostly a life-support husk.

* * *

><p>"As soon as the car is far enough from any potential collateral damage, target her and take her out, Patronus." Will did not often pull rank among the Autobots, but they were running out of time and in between populated areas. The last thing he anticipated was Patronus disagreeing with him. Ironhide had, on many occasions, expressed frustration with the limitations they faced due to the prohibitions against harming humans, citing that sometimes sacrificing a few, or even thousands, in order to save billions was the price of war. In this case, there was no doubt that humans were among the enemy, were dangerous, and urgently needed to be stopped.<p>

"Only if it is the last resort, Will," his partner's voice reverberated around him, and it was so very clear that it was Ironhide, as reluctant as Will was to admit it. Yet, the words he spoke did not sound like 'Hide at all. They were all Patronus. "Too many lives have already been lost, and we need to find a way to save those we can."

"Last resort is coming up fast," Will spat out. "Don't forget that she ordered Sarah and Annabelle to be kidnapped, and had no issue with their being collateral damage. She isn't going to care if we are in a populated area when she sets that thing off."

"We will not allow her to endanger those in a populated region," Optimus's comm played over the radio. "We just need to get close enough to disrupt the electronic signals of her vehicle and scan it so we can ascertain what will disable the the triggering mechanisms of the explosives." Will could feel the truck around him speeding up.

"And if they can't be disabled?" Will asked, shaking his head. The simple, most effective answer was Patronus's ranged weapons.

"I will talk her down," Optimus replied. "It has been said before that I am gifted with persuasion," he added in a tone that suggested wry humor.

"Optimus, if you get close enough to talk her down, you are close enough for her to set off the explosives," Will protested. He was tired of seeing his own harmed, whether mech or human.

"Which might damage me at that range, but not beyond repair," Optimus answered reasonably.

Will could feel the sudden tension in the air around him, the protest in the spark that was nearly directly underneath him in this configuration. The sudden silence told him that the communication was no longer being broadcast to him.

::Absolutely not, Optimus. You are far less expendable at this point than I am. I will talk the human down. I am closer to her at this point and will disable her vehicle remotely.::

::I cannot allow you to take that risk,:: Optimus said, as this discussion fell so firmly into what Optimus's memory banks associated with his weapons' master. ::Expendable is not an adjective I apply to any of my mechs, and you know this.::

::It doesn't matter how you feel about this, Prime. We need you around, undamaged, not in Medical right now. You are the one who will need to address the humans, to help sway their opinions and misconceptions of us. I'm not giving you a choice on this one,:: and with that, the black mech sped up enough to send the signal that would disrupt the electrical systems of the car, causing it to glide to a stop on an upcoming hill.

Optimus could only swear, deep in his spark, at the stubborn willfulness of his mechs... and feel that much more pride in Patronus. All they had to do was get through today, without losing anyone, Optimus told himself. Each day would get better; it had to. Jazz was containing Soundwave, and Megatron was inbound to deal with him permanently. All they needed was to talk this human around, while the rest of the Spec Ops team rounded up the others they had managed to identify.

Will watched as the car, unable to steer, accelerate or break, slowed, and then finally stopped on the top of a small hill on the road. Roadblocks were already preventing more traffic from coming their direction. "Not sure what your plan is, big guy, but if you insist on trying to talk her down, a human is going to be more effective at this point, and I don't think she is going to waste her explosives on me if you aren't in range."

"Wish Arcee was here to prove you wrong," Patronus told him. The femme had proven to have an ability to fast talk others in her short time on Earth prior to Egypt, and Ironhide had been impressed, according to the memory block Patronus had integrated. "Just... Will, remember this: she's probably been hurt. Don't take the pain and fear of this morning out on her, when that's just making it repeat, over and over!" That was definitely the diplomacy modules coming out, but Patronus did not see anything to disagree with in his spark-deep feeling too many had died already.

Will nodded curtly. "Just stay beyond range, Patronus. I know what it's like to lose people. I know what it does to you inside." Implicit in his words was the fact that he could not bear to see the mech he had already lost once go down again. Not when there was something he could do to prevent it. It was humans causing the issues now, no matter who was directing them from behind the scenes. It needed to be a human who solved it, one way or the other.

"I'll stay... unless I am needed. I can't be a father, Will," Patronus reminded his partner.

Will checked his concealed weapon and bit his tongue from saying just how much the black mech could be to his daughter. This wasn't the time to argue the point. The important thing was keeping both mechs well out of range and handling the issue, however he needed to. He set out at a jog toward the now disabled Ford. As he got closer, he could see the driver, her head slumped against the wheel.

Through the open window, he could see that her eyes were open. She wasn't injured. Her hands were white where they gripped the wheel. She looked a little younger than Sarah.

She sat up and looked at him, focusing on him as an effigy for her frustration at being balked in her mission. Why could this soldier not see how wrong he and his company were? Why did he persist in assisting the giant killers? Because she did recognize him; Will Lennox was the face of NEST in the aftermath of Chicago. She wanted to get out of the car and scream and rant at him for his betrayal of humanity, but a larger part of her was aware of the straps binding her in the car that would only release with help, aware of the explosives, and ready to use them even if her target was not truly in sight.

Maybe, just maybe, taking out the robots' highest-placed ally would be enough.

"Ma'am," Will said, close enough to the open window for her to clearly hear him. "I'd like to undo those straps and get you out of there. There is no reason for anyone else to get hurt. You've been being manipulated by one of the Decepticons who remained when the others left. If you continue on this road, you are doing exactly what the ones who hurt you want you to do."

"You're lying," she said, crisp and clear, with no anger in her voice, despite the hurt within her. "You want to turn this all around, make me no better than you are." She would not fall for such. She knew just who she was, who her friends were, and why they did what they did.

"Have you ever actually met the person who has been sending you funding, weapons? Because I have. He is one of the most skilled manipulators the enemy has, and has been getting humans to do his dirty work on this planet since the early '70s. There isn't much left of those he uses once he's done with them. My partner watched your agents literally disintegrate because of the nanotech he designed and put in that wine he sent you. If you come away from the car, I can prove it all to you," Will said, glancing behind him to be sure Patronus was still far out of range.

"I could prove to you, with my data, that your 'friends' have been responsible for massive collateral damage and multiple death-tolls that number in the hundreds even before Chicago," she told him as evenly as before. "Beijing ring a bell, soldier? Or maybe you were there, helping them kill innocents in their war?"

Will felt his blood pressure rising. The woman was showing no signs of backing down, and they were simply digging in their heals. "I was there. I've been at nearly every engagement, and have watched mechs allow themselves to be injured, horribly, in order to avoid harming a human being. The mech back there? The one you intended to destroy by kidnapping my wife and my daughter... he has put himself in harm's way to protect human beings countless times. Your intended target today took on three of the most dangerous Decepticons, without backup, to protect a single human being. I watched one of them allow himself to be ripped in two to give a group of humans, civilians and military, time to get away. So yeah, I've been there, each and every time. I was here in Chicago, and lost the majority of my team to protect the lives of the people in this city. You saw what the Decepticons are capable of, and now one of them is pulling your strings, feeding you data, getting you to do his dirty work to take out the very people who put their bodies and frames at risk to protect you."

She looked at him with a strong conviction in her jaw, tight lines around her eyes. "They have to leave, soldier. They will destroy us all, either by killing us, using us as they use you, or by changing us irrevocably! Why can't you see they do not belong among us, when we are so fragile in comparison!"

Will forced himself not to retort with equal venom, but instead watched her, a reluctant part of him admiring her courage, as misguided as it was. If he hadn't seen the sacrifices the mechs had made... if Ironhide had not been a part of his family, how would he have felt? He despised her willingness to use his own family as a pawn, though. Carefully, so she could see what he was doing, he pulled out his iPhone, where he kept photos of his family …all the members of his family.

"We _are_ fragile," he said. "Which is why I trust my partner back there with what is most precious to me, because from the very beginning he has proven to me just how important it is to him to protect what is fragile and vulnerable."

With that, he held out the phone where he knew she could see it, with one of the early photos of Ironhide holding Annabelle as an infant, an expression on the mech's faceplates that someone would of have to be blind not to see and understand.

The woman looked, softening for a moment, but then she shook her head. "She'll be changed, not human, just for knowing him."

"Still human, miss," came a voice from Will's watch. "And you underestimate how much you and yours are changing me and my kind. Please...don't get angry again, and don't...don't do anything permanent, but I've been listening. I've been watching the world since I 'woke up' after the battle here. I want to know both sides of the story, and yet I'm learning it's not two sides. There's as many sides as there are people, and mechs, and we all have a reason for how we do what we do. That little girl? You say she won't be human. Maybe you're right. Maybe she'll be more. Maybe she'll look at the differences in skin color, in social climate, in religion, and decide that those things really don't matter enough to divide her from the rest of her kind. Maybe she'll use the lesson of seeing my kind split over a civil war that broke our planet as a reason to pull together with everyone she knows, to make this world stronger, safer, better. Miss... I don't want any more deaths, from any side. Lives are too precious to lose that way. Destroying more sparks or more bodies is not going to solve anything, bring anyone back, or make things right. The only way we...your kind and mine... can make things right is by building, protecting, and moving forward with an eye toward preventing the hate and anger that brought us all to this point."

"You brought that hate and anger here," she spat out, tensing at the sound of the voice, her hands gripping the wheel even tighter. "It wasn't enough for you to destroy your own world, you had to come and take ours as well."

"You are right that the war came here, and I would do anything to change that, but I can't, and until we're sure you and your planet are truly safe from reprisals, we need to stay, to protect you, and we have a duty to help you rebuild," the voice continued through the soldier's watch. "If those I served, so long ago, had listened to the people who were angry and hurting, like you are now, instead of simply ordering mechs like me to dispose of them up as lawbreakers and threats to stability, perhaps the war would never have become what it did. I will listen to you. Optimus Prime will listen to you. Please don't allow this war to cost any more lives."

The woman took a deep breath. "I do not trust your words. I don't trust what you offer. How can I, when my world... my city and my life, that is, have been destroyed by your kind?" she asked, ignoring Will completely now, to talk to the voice on the other end.

"I don't blame you for that. If I were in your position, I would not trust us either," the voice responded. "I would want to blow up those that placed what I love at risk. The fact that there are humans who have trusted us enough to allow us to be part of their families, that Will and his family allowed me to bond to them as their Guardian, is nothing short of a miracle to me. You have every reason to distrust us, to hate us for what has come to your world and happened to this city. Nonetheless, I, and others like me, have and will continue to put our sparks at risk to protect this world and its people."

Will fought down his anger over the threat to his family, and let Patronus's words sink in, leading to finding a route he thought was best. Mearing, and her damn protocols, was finally going to be an example he could use. "Ma'am, what I think you and your friends need now isn't to destroy those robots left here. I think what we all need is you and your friends working with us, seeing what they do, and calling us on the carpet if we do step too far, since me and my men are so used to being with the Autobots as allies. Doesn't it make more sense to use what they offer, and keep them in check, than just trying to destroy it all, and watching as some dictator in a foreign country takes their tech and reverse engineers it to use against us all?"

"I'm not sure what makes sense...not any more," she said quietly. "Nothing has made any sense since they made this city their ground zero. How do you know it... he isn't manipulating you? Using you as a tool? Using our government as a tool? The one on television said that they needed our resources. These ones just found a more palitable way to get what they need."

"Because I've seen them going hungry," Will said. "I know they're hurting for real fuel and what they need, but they subsist on the ration they've been given. I watch their medic take what he's given and split it to give some more to his patients rather than ask for any extra to help them heal faster. I've watched them carefully comb the planet for scraps of their own metals, rather than ask to even go into our junkyards. They don't want to take. They want to trade fair value, but there's only so much of what they have and can make that they feel they can trust us with... because they don't want us to escalate our own wars to where they were."

Before she could respond, another voice spoke from Will's watch, one that made the hairs on her arms stand up with its sheer power and command even filtered through the tiny device. "Josie Beller, I have sent an electromagnetic signal that has disabled the triggering mechanisms on the explosives in your vehicle. We will not harm you, but there are nanites active in your body that will end your life if one of us comes into contact with you. Please allow Colonel Lennox to unstrap you from the vehicle and administer treatment for the virus Soundwave has infected you with. I do not wish to see you come to any harm."

The woman looked at the watch, then at Will, and then slumped, her head resting against the wheel again, refusing to admit to the gratitude she felt that the choice was not out of her hands. "I want to see tests of my blood before and after this so-called virus is treated," she said coolly. "And if I learn any of you are lying, about any of this, you will find reason to understand humanity is strong enough to overcome all of you."

"Of that, I have no doubt," the baritone voice responded even as she heard sirens approaching from the distance. "You will be provided with whatever evidence you need, from an independent source, but for now, it is important that those nanites be disabled. There is an EMS team on its way, who will take a blood sample prior your being treated with the antiviral technology. You will be taken into custody by local law enforcement, not by NEST or the Autobots. I will personally advocate for your supervised parole once it is clear that Soundwave is no longer endangering and manipulating you."

"Don't put yourself out. I've got my own back covered," she informed the voice on the watch. She then nodded curtly to Will. "Get me out of here."

"Thank you, Josie Beller, for cooperating. I hope we each can learn from the other in the future," Patronus told her with sincerity in his gruff voice. "I understand the desire to protect what you care for, and the willingness to put yourself on the line."

She couldn't bring herself to respond to him as Will cut through the ropes the held her into the car and she stumbled out of it, having to lean on him until her circulation returned. In the distance in one direction she could see the dark form of the robot who had spoken with her the most, looking far too similar to the one who had taken out every human around her that horrible day. Superimposed on that mental image was the photo Lennox had shown her of the dark form holding the tiny, vulnerable child... a child she had thought herself willing to sacrifice to destroy him... but would she actually have had the guts to go through with that plan? She had not even managed to convince herself to take out the soldier who clearly was regarded as an enemy.

Looking the other way, she saw the taller, blue robot approach and then stop, his optics piercing the dusk, watching her intently. She could only hope she had made the right choice not to trigger the explosives the moment their collaborator had approached her car.

* * *

><p>The incoming warlord did not bother with any niceties as he sliced through the atmosphere in one of the few deadzones left on the planet. He had given a cursory scan of the satellites in orbit, knowing where Soundwave had been before, but the communicator was highly skilled at hiding from even his own kind. Once he was on planet, Megatron would be able to recall his operative properly.<p>

Just because he felt like being irritable to Prime, he sent a scathing review of the messily nasty weather he had landed in on the remote island, complete with sensor readings, to his brother. The distracted acknowledgement he received back did nothing to mollify the Lord High Protector in the least.

Getting his pedes planted beneath his immense form, Megatron reviewed the data he had stored on his last survey of this bothersome planet, choosing a transscan he had filed away as a potential tool should he have required a strategic advancement away from Autobot battle lines. In moments, the configuration settled into his protoform shell, and he rose into the air, a sleek and fierce F-35 cutting the air toward North America, and his errant lieutenant.

* * *

><p>"Ironhide!" a voice squealed as a tiny human blur raced from the medical hanger, right past her dad into the waiting hand of the just-transformed mech.<p>

"Hello, sparklet," the mech said warmly, lifting her into the air just fast enough for it to be fun, but slow enough to keep the contents of her tanks where they belonged.

"Did you blow up the bad guys? Did you get the ones who tried to get Mommy and me?" she asked, leaning her face against the grill on his chest so she could feel his sparkler make her body vibrate.

"The grown-ups who tried to harm you and your mother are in jail, as are the others who were working with them, but you know that I never blow up humans, Annabelle," he said in a tone that was slightly scolding, but mostly just warm and safe.

"I know, but these ones were bad. They wanted to hurt you and Siders and Optimist and they hurt Jolt and Bee!" she said, holding on to his grill and looking up at his blue optics. She sometimes wished his face was still the older, more scarred one he used to have, but lately she could not even really remember that face very much, and liked his new, young one.

"They did bad things, Annabelle. People who do bad things need to be stopped from hurting others, but if we can stop them without deactivating them, it is better for everyone. Even people who do bad things can change," the mech said, a single finger stroking her back with affection.

Annabelle liked it when Ironhide was in his teaching mood. He didn't have as many stories to tell her without all of his memories, but he still managed to come up with good ones. "Did any of the bad robots change? Or are you still going to blow them up?" she asked.

"I hope that some of them have changed, Annabelle. Their leader is on his way to take away the one who has been getting humans to do bad things. But if any of them threaten to harm you, or your parents, or other humans, I will not hesitate to blow them up. They are very old and should know better than to harm those who are smaller than they are."

"Like Toby Smith on the playground. He is bigger than just about every kid in class, and keeps pushing around the little ones," she said sagely. She knew all about bullies, having stood up to many of them over her preschool and kindergarten career.

"Tell me about Toby Smith on the playground, and, more importantly, what you have done to stop him from pushing around children who are less resourceful and courageous than yourself, sparklet," Patronus said, glancing down at Sarah and Will who were doing their own catching up, talking quietly with their hands on each other's shoulders and foreheads touching almost as though they were two mechs. His field flared to include them even as he listened to his smallest charge tell him all about how she had talked down the playground bully with the same ferocity and persuasiveness as her mother was capable of.

* * *

><p>Optimus Prime had never cared for the data entry that came with being a leader. Privately, one of his biggest reliefs when Prowl had defected from Megatron had been to have such an able assistant on that score. Now, however, he had to do his own, and he had discovered that the humans were quite adept at burying even someone as large as himself in 'paper trails and red tape'. He worked on it, though, finding the noises of the headquarters to be reassuring in many ways, but not paying close enough attention as to be unsurprised when Patronus arrived at his door.<p>

"Take a break," the black mech said gruffly, placing a hand on Prime's shoulder where he sat at the large slab that had been set up as a desk.

"I do need to complete this," Optimus said. "The Lennox family is resting, I take it?" Prime had enjoyed seeing the peace of the family with their Guardian earlier, as the day's events were sloughed off in the relative safety of the base. Seeing them interact had been both reassuring, for it was clear to Optimus that they had settled in as a unit, and enough to prod the leader to analyze how Patronus had developed. There was clearly Ironhide's gruff charm and strength, as events of the evening had proved, but it was wrapped now in a gentle determination to work toward peace. Optimus was certainly not going to mind not having to tell Ironhide to cool his cannons so often.

"They are, and it is well earned after today. I'll help you complete your inane amounts of human paperwork, after you take a break with me. Old bots can still learn new skills," he added before Optimus could protest that Ironhide _never_ bothered himself with bureaucracy.

Optimus chuckled at him for that, but stood and stretched out the lines that had kinked while working. "Far be it for me to turn away a volunteer on paperwork. Although, Sideswipe would be turned down. I still remember how infuriated he made Ultra Magnus the day he turned in a battle recap. You'd think Sideswipe had been on the field alone, from the way it had been written."

"I'm sure, from his perspective, he might as well have been for all the good the others did," Patronus responded, turning to slide shut the door that separated the section of the command hangar that had been sectioned off as Prime's office as he urged Prime with his fields to follow him.

Optimus nodded. "A fierce warrior, and true friend, for all that he and I have a fractured history together," he admitted as they walked. "Now, just what brings you to abducting me tonight, Patronus? It is not like you to not have an ulterior motive, and I am not yet so far down on recharge as to need intervention."

"I don't have recharge in mind," Patronus said, leading Prime toward the practice hangar, and then sealing the door behind them, engaging the lock. With a snort he noticed that some of the soldiers had parked their ridiculous excuses for armored vehicles in there again, but they could always be lifted and moved to the side. "So, would you prefer to spar before I 'face you? Or just get on with renewing our bond?"

Optimus regarded his friend, his youngest and oldest mech in one form, and then slowly shook his helm at the warrior. "I've had enough fighting of late, and may yet have to go at least one round with Megatron once he arrives. I prefer to be at peace with you, Patronus."

"If you think you are going to be seeing him alone, I'll have Ratchet pull CMO rank on you and make sure your processors haven't been replaced by something built by Intel," the black mech said, even as he flared his field invitingly, with all of the confidence and assurance Optimus could remember coming from Ironhide in similar circumstances, but enough tentativeness that he could still feel Patronus. He found himself pleased with both.

Optimus Prime levered his bulk to the floor of the hangar, reaching out for Patronus to join him as he placed his back against one of the FMTVs. It rocked some at his weight on it, but the five-ton steadied and let Optimus relax his support struts some. "I have held you at a distance, Patronus, and I know this has troubled you. You have proven yourself repeatedly in the trials these past weeks, despite having nothing you needed to prove to me, my friend. Now... tell me just what you do seek from me, by renewing these bonds?"

The black mech lowered himself to the floor, positioning himself next to Optimus rather than more intimately chest-to-chest. He did not intend to leave the hanger without having renewed his bond to the mech whom his spark was so deeply loyal to. But he also now had the patience to allow Optimus time to make the choice as well.

"Renewing with Ratchet allowed me to gain back more of myself than I thought possible without taking years I do not wish to squander, and it was slagging helpful for him, as well. The few memories I do have, and everything I have experienced since my reformat, convince me that the choices I have made regarding my cohort are the right ones. I understand why you have been careful. You did not wish to steal my choices from me, and you know too well the power of your own spark when it comes to those who love you. I even understand the damage it could have done had I not been the same mech you know, and too much of Ironhide had been imposed on me. But I _am_ Ironhide, Optimus. Different, but still the same mech. I have no doubt of it. Ratchet no longer doubts. It is my designation, and I'm changing it in the registry as soon as you give me clearance to do so. Renew our bond so you can know what I already do."

"All I need is your word," Optimus told him. "But I will not deny you what we both want, either." The fields around Prime loosened, reaching out, encompassing his companion within the strongly nurturing waves of energy. "I only needed time to be certain, Ironhide, that my wishes for you were not what governed your choices. Much as you, when I was still new to palace life, gave me the chance to thoroughly know who and what I was within your own protection."

Ironhide's fields easily merged with those now saturating him, with a sense of long familiarity as he straddled the larger mech's lap to bring their chests together, his hands stroking the cabling along his sides. "Show me," he said, his gruff voice tempered by the deep affection across their bond and hunger in his field. "Please," he added, in a softer tone that assured Prime that they would not be losing Patronus even as they gained back Ironhide.

"I will," Optimus said, voice gone low, almost like silk in how it stroked over Ironhide's audials as he brought his hands up behind Ironhide, protective and supportive. All his memories of Ironhide spiraled up within his processor, as a data cord emerged, offering both connections to the younger/older mech as their chestplates cracked open in response to the need for this renewal.

* * *

><p><em>Notes<em>

Only the epilogue and some "outtakes" to go, folks. Thanks for being amazing readers and reviewers. Femme has at least one prequel planned that was requested by the winner of the auction for famine relief in Somalia, and I'm certain you will see other cowriting projects from us in the future!


	13. Epilogue

**Title**: Patronus 13 - Epilogue  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Bayverse, DotM  
><strong>Authors<strong>: femme4jack & Merfilly  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ironhide (Patronus), Annabelle Lennox, Jazz, Megatron, Mikaela Banes, Optimus Prime, Soundwave  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Things wrap up rather nicely despite the surprise guests who show up at the party.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: This is it, lovely readers! We will be posting a few outtakes as we get them written. Thank you for reading and such wonderful reviews.

**WARNINGS**: Unrepentant fluff.

Traveling through the thicker atmosphere of Earth was never Megatron's chosen place to be. He maintained comm silence, though, and merely listened, scanning through the waves of noise these inferior beings insisted on cluttering the spectrum with.

Listening, he began to pick up subtle traces of Decepticon codes running through certain transmissions, whispers of a ghostly presence. Surprisingly, the one he was seeking seemed to have centered himself very close to the source of their last battle.

Having verified his data, Megatron flew toward Gary, Indiana to pick up his errant lieutenant, certain that this would be an exercise in either futility or diplomacy, neither of which were strong suits of his.

* * *

><p>It was a simple note, merely an addendum to the daily briefing that went out to NEST personnel and Autobots alike. It stated that the temporary designation 'Patronus' should be changed to the permanent designation 'Ironhide' at the request of that mech, that all logs and registries should be updated accordingly.<p>

To the majority of the soldiers and civilians who were part of NEST, it was a matter of a shrug and a quickly updated file on whatever laptop or terminal they were using at the time. Most of the soldiers who had known Ironhide before that fateful day in Washington DC were now dead, NEST having lost fully three-quarters of its combat personnel in the battle in Chicago. A few of the analysts and code specialists made disappointed comments about no longer being able to come up with Harry Potter puns to relate to their activities, though calling the Internet "Soundwave's Horcrux" was not going to go away anytime soon.

But to the mecha, both on Earth, and those who later would get word on Mars, and to those human soldiers who had fought alongside Ironhide, the simple note meant everything.

Most mecha came online knowing, at spark level, their designation. Mudflap and Skids had near instantly chosen the same, albeit reversed glyphs. The fact that the reformatted mech who had been temporarily designated 'Patronus' had not had a clear idea of his designation at first had been something of a mixed sign, something which had led those who understood how vulnerable a new mech was while developing their personality matrix to be even more careful.

The official change did not surprise Annabelle Lennox in the least. She had known all along that Patronus was just a code name, and sometimes, just to be a little silly, she called the dark mech by his special, secret, code designation because it was fun, and her mommy, daddy and sometimes even Ironhide were reading (or in the mech's case, reciting) the Harry Potter books to her, though Ironhide preferred to tell her stories that he was learning about Cybertron and even historical stories about Earth, in addition to tutoring her on Cybertronian glyphs while her organic processors were at the ideal age for integrating such knowledge.

Optimus Prime watched as his people, both organic and not, slowly learned to live again, as Chicago's restoration neared an end. He knew Megatron was not yet departed from Earth, but Soundwave had been absent from all further dealings with the human resistance cell. He wasn't certain what that meant, as a couple weeks went by, with the pulse of Megatron in the back of his processor and spark. He did not want to press, though, because the one Decepticon sighting NEST logged in those two weeks was dealt with before Sideswipe even assembled his strike force.

Whatever his brother was planning, it did not include attacking the Autobots yet.

When the civilian government was fully able to take over Chicago's needs, NEST began their evacuation to a new base, one some distance from various population centers, so the Autobots could decide their own future. For that fact, and for Ironhide, and for the twins, Annabelle got with Sam, Carly, and Ratchet, explaining in her earnest little girl fashion how a party needed to happen. Unsurprisingly, Carly was quick to agree; she had found studying the Autobots fascinating, and wanted more of an opportunity to do so. With her as an ally, Annabelle swiftly got her way, contingent on settling into the base.

* * *

><p>The vast stretch of central Oregon high desert and mountain foothills, complete with its own extinct volcanic cinder cone (south of the better known dormant Mount Hood) was quite convenient to the Lennox family farm, located south of Sherman. The Autobots had won over the state's ecologically minded populace by promising that the vast majority of the acreage around the cone would be a wildlife preserve, saving the privately held acreage from the oil prospecting and toxic waste dump its former holder had been planning. Its libertarian minded populace was pleased the land was to be preserved by a private venture rather than at the cost of taxpayers.<p>

It hadn't hurt that the Autobots purchased the newly formed preserve outright, at quite a tax benefit to the state thanks to some hastily passed legislation. The preserve had been purchased with funds obtained by selling rights to new clean energy technology to several Oregon-based firms, with the expected royalties from those patents helping to fund the future of the base. Considering the expected boost in tourist revenue (the agreement had included a visitor center, to be staffed, when possible, by actual Cybertronians, on the edge of the preserve closet to populated areas), the several thousand new jobs in clean energy, and the tax revenue those companies would bring, Oregon was coming out quite well.

In addition, several humans had invested in the land trust and the technology firms. Bobby Epps would be reaping profits for a long while off the deals, as he had provided the means to acquire the capital to begin with over the few years the Autobots had been his friends. Even Dutch had kicked in, with a mercenary ruthlessness on his cut. Seymour Simmons had thrown funds in as well. By far the single largest investor was one Mikaela Banes, who apparently had become quite wealthy investing in foreign markets during her time overseas, proving once and for all that one could invest in environmentally responsible, fair trade cooperatives and do very well. Whether she, or any other human allies, had been given investment tips over the years was an open question.

The base would be mostly underground, a true Cybertronian city, and excavation had already begun using both human and Autobot labor under the direction of the recently arrived Hoist and Grapple. Both were ecstatic to have been reunited with Que, their cohort's youngest creation, and Wheeljack, who with the arrival of other members of his cohort, could not be kept away (nor would anyone wish to). The inventor had brought with him Arcee, now fully recovered from the severe injuries and loss of her other components in Egypt.

Mars was not abandoned, but for now, carefully crafted and programmed drones were expanding the facility there, preparing it for any more Autobots who might be inbound at this time. Perceptor and Drift (the newest member of that cohort), had arrived with Hoist and Grapple, but had opted to remain on the Mars base and supervise the continued expansion, neither of them ready for interactions with sentient organic lifeforms after some of the horrors they had endured and witnessed.

Optimus Prime knew the humans would grow weary of the aliens in their midst; he was planning against that day prudently. Most of all, he wanted the facility there to be atmospheric to human specs, which meant more effort than he might otherwise have put into such an outpost. No matter what, Optimus did not want the human members of his cohort to ever fail to have a home with them, should Earth's climate become hostile to those allied to the Autobots.

Annabelle wheedled and begged and cajoled Ironhide until he did bring her out to the base to fully explore it, even before it was completed. It allowed the child time with her guardian, and gave her parents time to 'renew their bond' in private. It never failed to make Optimus smile, even when his mood was completely down, to see Ironhide wandering the base with the tiny human in the shoulder seat and harness Ironhide had added to his armor and transformation sequence.

With the help of Carly, Sam, and Mikaela, who had recently returned from yet another short, yet successful, covert operation using the improved "polyjuice" technology, plans for the long-promised party were well under way. The base would not be complete, but the temporary, ground level recreational hanger was a good enough location. The party was scheduled to coincide with the return of Will and Sarah from their well deserved "special alone time".

Mikaela walked in to the partially complete underground office where Optimus was making additions to his latest report. She needlessly cleared her throat for his attention and leaned against his pede. "Hey. Speaking with my Ratchet-hat on, you're supposed to put those data pads down, clear your processor of all things that are business, and move your big aft over to the rec hall. Annabelle has something to share with you."

Optimus, to his credit, immediately complied with the order, setting the pad on his desk with an affectionate flare of his fields for the human who was now effortlessly climbing up his frame to her preferred seating arrangement in the space between his neck and his shoulder armor. As soon as she had entered the room he had made the minor transformations to that space to ensure its safety to her unarmored, delicate frame.

"Far be it from me to keep Annabelle waiting," he said, standing at the speed he knew would cause his passenger the least amount of vertigo, despite her numerous prior demands that he 'not be so damn careful.'

"Everyone else is over there already. Ratchet said you weren't paying much attention," Mikaela said as he moved.

"I've been trying to make certain everything has been taken care of. With no new landfalls, on either side, your government has been... insistent that I meet their demands for information sharing." He kept his tone bland, but it was becoming a familiar complaint from him, and from Will's new second-in-command. It had made Bobby Epps quite pleased to be a citizen-at-large and not part of the military anymore, to avoid that entire rat's nest of bureaucracy.

"Buried in paperwork, huh? You poor thing. Maybe you should make Sideswipe your secretary. I hear he is good with reports," Mikaela responded innocently.

Optimus Prime laughed, a low rumble that radiated out, at the idea. "I wish to end my war, not start a new one," he reminded her.

"I guess the question is, paperwork notwithstanding, how you're doing, big guy?" she asked more seriously as they made their way out of one of the completed underground entrances toward the reinforced ground-level hanger. The heat of his plating and unseen shielding protected her from the worst of the icy winter air sweeping across the high desert plateau from the north.

Optimus was silent for a long moment, even as he covered the ground in his long strides. "I worry. Megatron is still on the planet. Soundwave is still gathering information, though nothing obtrusive enough to make Jazz go after him. I cannot help but wonder if I made the correct choice in regards to my brother, and to his followers."

Whatever Mikaela was about to say was interrupted by a blaring proximity warning at the same time that Optimus felt his bond with his brother thrown wide open, impressing upon him, first of all, that his base's defenses were ludicrously inadequate, and, secondly, that his brother was not intending an attack. Optimus was convinced that either the bond was working on him to make him react to Megatron coming nearer to him, or Megatron had decided to be a glitch-taken, patient spawn for once and wait until Optimus was thinking of him. He hoped for the former; a Megatron with patience might actually be too dangerous to be contained.

Mikaela had enough time to see the E-3 Sentry and F-35 Lightning II transform a thousand feet up in the air to land vertically on their pedes, effectively blocking her and Optimus off from the majority of the Autobots who were already at the hanger. Before she could see any more, she was being transferred to a newly formed compartment underneath the panels of Prime's upper back within the dense armor plating that protected his spark casing. She heard, but did not see, Autobots and NEST personnel pouring out of both the recreation hanger and from the underground tunnels.

Ironhide, who had been on top of the world, given how much he was being spoiled by his chosen family, felt his entire spark seize in his chest as he rushed out in response to both the alarm and the strike of fear/anger from Prime. He did not want to obey when Prime used the human 'stay back' hand sign at all of them. Neither, he could tell, did Jazz, but he reinforced that sentiment through their cohort bond. The last thing Prime needed, or any of them, was Jazz rushing up on Megatron.

"Do look at the turnout for me, brother," Megatron said in a patronizing tone. Soundwave remained at his flank, on the right side and a few steps back, while the left was screamingly empty. The red optics gazed over the assembly to his left, noting the distinctly protective knot of Prime's cohort, confirming Soundwave's words that it had been Jazz blocking his efforts to turn the humans into slaves. "It would be... what is the human word, Soundwave?"

"Impolite."

"Yes, that... to leave without sharing the results of my visit to this mud-encrusted rock," Megatron said smugly.

"I must admit I have been curious as to the amount of time it took you to apprehend your lieutenant," Optimus said cautiously.

"If I had to be here, dear brother," Megatron said, voice dripping in sarcasm, "I was going to finish my clean-up. I did handle that one landing while you were still occupied at the battle site." His optics glittered a little; he'd recovered a valuable asset that day.

Soundwave was busy analyzing the assembled mecha and organics. His optics kept returning to Jazz. With what his Lord had planned, their latest round of cyberstalking one another was likely to be the last for quite some time. He knew it would be a long time before anyone contested with him as seriously among his own kind, either on the ship or on Cybertron once they arrived.

::You keep lookin' at me like that an' someone's gonna think ya want me under yer plating as well as diggin' around in yer coding,:: an encrypted comm slid effortlessly into one of Soundwave's private channels.

::Worthy opponents will be lacking,:: Soundwave said in turn, fine-tuning the band and locking the frequency in place for Jazz. ::I do look forward to a return to such... diversions, when you move forward from this place.::

Optimus found himself curious as to just who his brother had recovered or deactivated that day, but forced himself not to ask. His brother felt smug, arrogant, everything he expected, but he could sense no intentions of hostility, other than the hostility of words which had been traded between the two of them since the orn Optimus had been adopted into Sentinel's cohort.

"I am pleased you have recovered your own, brother," he responded, vaguely enough to include Soundwave and whomever the other landing had been.

Ironhide kept a tight focus on the scene, noting that Soundwave was being non-threatening, even quiet, in ways that meant he was living up to his function of analyst for a change, instead of a manipulator. A quick flick of attention at Bumblebee told him the little scout was still mellow. He felt along the cohort bond, determining that while everyone was tense and wary, no one was ready to throw the first blows. No matter how far out Ironhide scanned, he felt no other Cybertronian presences lying in ambush.

"When we are finished with the husks of the asteroids, I will see that they are sent to supplement your own needs, Optimus," Megatron continued, before filtering to their shared bond. ~Here... and on the fourth planet? Yes, Soundwave noticed.~

Optimus did not flinch. He had been expecting that discovery once Jazz's presence had become known. All signals from Mars indicated that the outpost had remained untouched. ~I would have thought less of him if he hadn't made the connection once he became aware of who was keeping him occupied until, and since, your arrival. We appreciate the ores. They will be put to good use.~

Optimus paused. While he certainly didn't mind being the beneficiary of Megatron's smug generosity, he knew better than to expect Megatron to accept any aid he offered in return, but his spark compelled him to offer, nonetheless, at the evidence of his brother's continued lack of subterfuge. ~Is there anything we can offer you to aid in your task, brother? Wheeljack has made promising advances in his research on new sources and refinements of energon-quality fuels, and you currently lack your primary energy researcher.~

Megatron scowled slightly at the reminder. ~I have what I need.~ He then softened the anger that had crept in across the bond. ~I will do this task, of rebuilding what we destroyed!~ he said fiercely, with the determination that he could accomplish this without assistance. Besides, now that Soundwave knew, no doubt the mech would not rest until he had discovered the formulae. After all, it meant one more chance to contest Jazz.

Ironhide was not pleased the communication had gone internal between the two leaders, and his cannons twitched at the first flare of anger in Megatron, but Optimus remained calm. That was enough for Ironhide to remain still and merely observe the efforts of diplomacy in action.

"I do not doubt you, brother. If fate allows, I will someday see what you have built," Optimus said aloud, his spark, again, feeling the call of his first home. At the same time, the protective affection for the small cohort member hidden in his back plating affirmed the call and duty to his new home, and to the species on the cusp of emerging from its adolescence to adulthood thanks, in part, to their premature exposure to a more technologically developed form of life.

"It will happen, Optimus. No other will be Prime in my existence," Megatron growled across the short distance between them. "As to your colony in this system..." He surveyed all the members of Prime's motley crew. "I will certainly send on any of your mecha who we encounter... including any that Shockwave might have forgotten about in the mines."

That announcement sent a collective ripple through the Autobots. They had not dared hope that any prisoners still lived, but Megatron's words implied that some did.

Optimus, even amid his relief at those words, briefly fretted about just who might be replacing his own mecha in said mines, though so few neutrals were known to remain, and the vast majority who had not abandoned Cybertron would not be in any state to assist with such labor for some time. He felt his brother become aware of his inadequately shielded thoughts, and felt a pulse of disdain from Megatron toward those unworthy of participating in the rebuilding, along with the subtle promise that it would be the Decepticons, and any among other factions who chose to work with them, who would rebuild the planet, not those who had been too weak minded to choose a side.

~I can send those on as well, but then you'd have the problem of fueling them. No... I will handle them in my own fashion with an eye to salvaging the life they have enjoyed.~ Megatron let just enough of his thoughts filter down to soothe his brother's worries; usefully skilled mecha would be allowed to resume their trade. Those who were not, would have the option of deportation to one of the more rough outpost worlds. It was life, and nothing less than survival, much like the Autobots faced in this system.

Optimus nodded in the fashion of the sentients of his adopted home. Survival must be their primary value now, and he could even acknowledge the cold dignity his brother offered those willing to work. Not for the first time, he considered again that his own strength should be added to that labor, because he, too, had destroyed his world...

~In time, brother. For now... we must let the war burn its cinders out.~

~It is true. A truce is far more likely to hold with our mecha in separate systems. The memories of our kind are far too long to let go of hatred easily.~ Optimus's own optics shifted briefly to the dark mech who was standing tall and vigilant, keeping a careful watch on the proceedings. Would Ironhide have been able to hold his fire before the loss of so many of his memories? Shifting his gaze to the small, silver mech, who was radiating private amusement, optics matched with Soundwave's, Prime knew he had enough rage still within that it would only take a small trigger for his brother to become his enemy again. Distance, and time, were needed before true reconciliation could take place.

Megatron closed the distance, amused when every single Autobot and even the organics focused in tighter, more aggressively, but all he did was reach out with one arm, digits open. Optimus saw the gesture, met him on that ground, as glad to see the open hand in a moment of peace as he had been to be brought to his feet by it in that fateful battle. Their digits locked around one another's forearms, and the heavily scarred helm of the Lord High Protector came to meet that of his Prime.

~Don't make me come back here again, brother,~ Megatron told him fiercely.

~When we next meet, I will come to you, brother,~ Optimus answered in turn, before letting go of the arm that clasped his.

"Soundwave," Megatron called to his lieutenant. "You can let your pet out of its case, now, Optimus. We are leaving."

Optimus did not move or release Mikaela from her protective encasement, despite Megatron's full thrust of dignified trust and promises across the bond. "Until the future draws us back together, brother," Optimus said, using the word in the full meaning, so that his own mecha knew he was committed to the division and truce they had made.

Soundwave impressed upon Jazz the encrypted frequency was at his disposal, until such time as the Decepticons left system and were out of reach. Implicit in that was an invitation for the higher order 'games' that were strictly battles of the processor. However, he moved to follow as Megatron stepped far enough away to transform and twist into the air.

Once the two jets passed beyond sensor range, and the human soldiers monitoring the satellite and moon-based feeds confirmed that they had likewise passed beyond the lunar orbit (now in Cybertronian alts), heading in the direction of Saturn, the all clear sounded and Annabelle came out from the tunnel she and her mommy had entered from the hanger.

She was scooped up quickly by her date for the interrupted party, her carefully selected black dress (a difficult color to find for a six year old) matching the obsidian armor. "What happened? Did the bad humans come back again? Or was it the bad... I mean... the other robots?" she asked, looking all over her Guardian for any signs of damage.

"It was Megatron..." Ironhide began, then he petted a finger down her hair. "Easy; he's trying to be better... and Soundwave. They were leaving." Ironhide's spark tried to be distrustful of it all, but there was hope, the hope that Patronus knew to be born from his own spark's weariness of battle that he thought he saw mirrored in the Protector.

"Maybe we should have invited them to the party," she said thoughtfully. "I invited Tina Anderson to my birthday party when I turned six and she stopped being such a meanie after that."

"That might have been interesting, Annabelle," was as much as Ironhide was willing to comment on that idea.

The sound of music blaring out from the hanger indicated that Jazz, at least, had decided it was time for the party to resume. Optimus watched as Ironhide made his way back inside, accompanied by the constant chattering of the tiny being strapped so securely to his shoulder, and felt a weariness and worry that permeated his spark for far too long begin to lift. His own human companion had slipped free the instant Megatron was beyond strike range, and remained in her favorite perch, hand out and resting lightly on his audial in a quiet show of their connection.

Everyone heard the music change tempo and pitch on Ironhide's entrance, as Annabelle laid down the first of many ultimatums to come in her handling of the males and mechs of her life. "Now you have to dance with me, because Jazz said it's the thing to do," she informed Ironhide, which invoked both laughter and appreciative aahs, dispelling any more negativity for the night.

Ironhide surprised them all by proving that evening, in response to her demand, that diplomacy and martial arts were not the only modules he had mastered since coming back online, and that there was very little he would refuse his youngest charge if he knew it would make her happy while keeping her safe.

After all, life was short for some, and no chance was to be wasted.


	14. Series update notice

**Series Update Notice**

For those who enjoyed Patronus, and who may not be aware, I am continuing the story with a prequel titled Fidelius, found under my profile. It is a gift story for Mmouse15 for her winning bid and generous donation to the FandomAid Help Somalia Auction at livejournal, and is also my NaNoWriMo project for November. I hope you enjoy! ~_Femme4jack_


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